Janice Meredith / Ford, Paul Leicester, 1865-1902

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Title: Janice Meredith

Author: Paul Leicester Ford

Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5719]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 14, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, JANICE MEREDITH ***




This eBook was prepared by Jeffrey Kraus-yao.


Janice Meredith

Paul Leicester Ford


Wallack's
Theatre
100th Performance

Mary Mannering
as
Janice Meredith

February 15th
1901


Janice Meredith

Volume I.


Books by Mr. Ford

The Honorable Peter Stirling
The Great K & A Train Robbery
The Story of an Untold Love
The True George Washington
Tattle-Tales of Cupid
The Many-Sided Franklin
The New England Primer


[Illustration: Janice Meredith (Miniature in color)]


Janice Meredith
A Story of the
American Revolution
by
Paul Leicester Ford
Author of "The Honorable Peter Stirling"

With a Miniature by Lillie V. O'Ryan
and numerous Scenes from the Play

Mary Mannering Edition



To George W. Vanderbilt

My dear George:
Into the warp and woof of every book an author weaves much
that even the subtlest readers cannot suspect, far less discern.
To them it is but a cross and pile of threads interlaced to
form a pattern which may please or displease their taste.
But to the writer every filament has its own association:
How each bit of silk or wool, flax or tow, was laboriously
gathered, or was blown to him; when each was spun by the
wheel of his fancy into yarns; the colour and tint his imagination
gave to each skein; and where each was finally woven
into the fabric by the shuttle of his pen. No thread ever quite
detaches itself from its growth and spinning, dyeing and weaving,
and each draws him back to hours and places seemingly
unrelated to the work.
And so, as I have read the proofs of this book I have found
more than once that the pages have faded out of sight and in
their stead I have seen Mount Pisgah and the French Broad
River, or the ramp and terrace of Biltmore House, just as
I saw them when writing the words which served to recall
them to me. With the visions, too, has come a recurrence to
our long talks, our work among the books, our games of chess,
our cups of tea, our walks, our rides, and our drives. It is
therefore a pleasure to me that the book so naturally gravitates
to you, and that I may make it a remembrance of those
past weeks of companionship, and an earnest of the present
affection of
                       PAUL LEICESTER FORD


ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume I.
       Janice Meredith (Miniature in color)
       "'T is sunrise at Greenwood"
       "Nay, give me the churn"
       "The British ran"
       "It flatters thee"
       "You set me free"
       "The prisoner is gone
       "Here's to the prettiest damsel"
       "I'm the prisoner"
       "Trenton is unguarded. Advance"
       "He'd make a proper husband"
       "Stay and take his place, Colonel"
       "Thou art my soldier"
       "'T is to rescue thee, Janice"
Volume II.
       George Washington (In color)
       "There's no safety for thee"
       "The despatch!"
       "Who are you?"
       "Art comfortable, Janice?"
       "Where is that paper?"
       "Victory"
       "Washington has crossed the Delaware!"
       "I love you for your honesty, Janice"
       "Don't move!"
       "Have I won?"
       "Where are you going?"


JANICE MEREDITH
A TALE OF THE REVOLUTION

VOLUME I

A HEROINE OF MANY POSSIBILITIES

"Alonzo now once more found himself upon an element
that had twice proved destructive to his happiness, but
Neptune was propitious, and with gentle breezes wafted
him toward his haven of bliss, toward Amaryllis.
Alas, when but one day from happiness, a Moorish zebec--"

"Janice!" called a voice.

The effect on the reader and her listener, both of whom
were sitting on the floor, was instantaneous. Each started and
sat rigidly intent for a moment; then, as the sound of approaching
footsteps became audible, one girl hastily slipped a little
volume under the counterpane of the bed, while the other
sprang to her feet, and in a hurried, flustered way pretended
to be getting something out of a tall wardrobe.

Before the one who hid the book had time to rise, a woman
of fifty entered the room, and after a glance, cried--

"Janice Meredith! How often have I told thee that it is
ungenteel for a female to repose on the floor?"

"Very often, mommy," said Janice, rising meekly, meantime
casting a quick glance at the bed, to see how far its smoothness
had been disturbed.

"And still thee continues such unbecoming and vastly indelicate
behaviour."

"Oh, mommy, but it is so nice!" cried the girl. "Did n't
you like to sit on the floor when you were fifteen?"

"Janice, thou 't more careless every day in bed-making,"
ejaculated Mrs. Meredith, making a sudden dive toward the
bed, as if she desired to escape the question. She smoothed
the gay patchwork quilt, seemed to feel something underneath,
and the next moment pulled out the hidden volume, which was
bound, as the bookseller's advertisements phrased it, in "half
calf, neat, marbled sides." One stern glance she gave the two
red-faced culprits, and, opening the book, read out in a voice
that was in itself an impeachment, "The Adventures of Alonzo
and Amaryllis!"

There was an instant's silence, full of omen to the culprits,
and then Mrs. Meredith's wrath found vent.

"Janice Meredith!" she cried. "On a Sabbath morning,
when thee shouldst be setting thy thoughts in a fit order for
church! And thou, Tabitha Drinker!"

"It 's all my fault, Mrs. Meredith," hurriedly asserted Tabitha.
"I brought the book with me from Trenton, and 't was I suggested
that we go on reading this morning."

"Six hours of spinet practice thou shalt have to-morrow,
miss," announced Mrs. Meredith to her daughter, "and this
afternoon thou shalt say over the whole catechism. As for
thee, Tabitha, I shall feel it my duty to write thy father of his
daughter's conduct. Now hurry and make ready for church."
And Mrs. Meredith started to leave the room.

"Oh, mommy," cried Janice, springing forward and laying a
detaining hand on her mother's arm in an imploring manner,
"punish me as much as you please,--I know 't was very,
very wicked,--but don't take the book away! He and
Amaryllis were just--"

"Not another sight shalt thou have of it, miss. My daughter
reading novels, indeed!" and Mrs. Meredith departed, holding
the evil book gingerly between her fingers, much as one might
carry something that was liable to soil one's hands.

The two girls looked at each other, Tabitha with a woebegone
expression, and Janice with an odd one, which might
mean many things. The flushed cheeks were perhaps due to
guilt, but the tightly clinched little fists were certainly due to
anger, and, noting these two only, one would have safely
affirmed that Janice Meredith, meekly as she had taken her
mother's scolding, had a quick and hot temper. But the eyes
were fairly starry with some emotion, certainly not anger, and
though the lips were pressed tightly together, the feeling that
had set them so rigidly was but a passing one, for suddenly the
corners twitched, the straight lines bent into curves, and flinging
herself upon the tall four-poster bedstead, Miss Meredith
laughed as only fifteen can laugh.

"Oh, Tibbie, Tibbie," she presently managed to articulate,
"if you look like that I shall die," and as the god of Momus
once more seized her, she dragged the quilt into a rumpled
pile, and buried her face in it, as if indeed attempting to suffocate
herself.

"But, Janice, to think that we shall never know how it
ended! I could n't sleep last night for hours, because I was
so afraid that Amaryllis would n't have the opportunity to vindicate
herself to--and 't would have been finished in another
day."

"And a proper punishment for naughty Tibbie Drinker it
is," declared Miss Meredith, sitting up and assuming a judicially
severe manner. "What do you mean, miss, by tempting
good little Janice Meredith into reading a wicked romance on
Sunday?"

"'Good little Janice!'" cried Tibbie, contemptuously. "I
could slap thee for that." But instead she threw her arms
about Janice's neck and kissed her with such rapture and energy
as to overbalance the judge from an upright position, and the
two roiled over upon the bed laughing with anything but discretion,
considering the nearness of their mentor. As a result
a voice from a distance called sharply--

"Janice!"

"O gemini!" cried the owner of that name, springing off
the bed and beginning to unfasten her gown,--an example
promptly followed by her room-mate.

"Art thou dressing, child?" called the voice, after a
pause.

"Yes, mommy," answered Janice. Then she turned to her
friend and asked, "Shall I wear my light chintz and kenton
kerchief, or my purple and white striped Persian?"

"Sufficiently smart for a country lass, Jan," cried her friend.

"Don't call me country bred, Tibbie Drinker, just because
you are a modish city girl."

"And why not thy blue shalloon?"

"'T is vastly unbecoming."

"Janice Meredith! Can't thee let the men alone?"

"I will when they will," airily laughed the girl.

"Do unto others--" quoted Tabitha.

"Then I will when thee sets me an example," retorted Janice,
making a deep curtsey, the absence of drapery and bodice
revealing the straightness and suppleness of the slender rounded
figure, which still had as much of the child as of the woman in
its lines.

"Little thought they get from me," cried Tabitha, with a
toss of her head.

      "'Tell me where is fancy bred,
      In the heart or in the head?'"

hummed Janice. "Of course, one does n't think about men,
Mistress Tabitha. One feels." Which remark showed perception
of a feminine truth far in advance of Miss Meredith's years.

"Unfeeling Janice!"

"'T is a good thing for the oafs and ploughboys of Brunswick.
For there are none better."

"Philemon Hennion?"

"'Your servant, marms,'" mimicked Janice, catching up a
hair brush and taking it from her head as if it were a hat, while
making a bow with her feet widely spread. "'Having nothing
better ter do, I've made bold ter come over ter drink a dish of
tea with you.'" The girl put the brush under her arm, still
further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended
coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell
to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness
which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while
mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of
embarrassment,--which quickly became a genuine inability to
speak from laughter.

"Janice, thee should turn actress."

"Oh, Tibbie, lace my bodice quickly, or I shall burst of
laughing," breathlessly begged the girl.

"Janice," said her mother, entering, "how often must I tell
thee that giggling is missish? Stop, this moment."

"Yes, mommy," gasped Janice. Then she added, after a
shriek and a wriggle, "Don't, Tabitha!"

"What ails thee now, child? Art going to have an attack of
the megrims?"

"When Tibbie laces me up she always tickles me, because
she knows I'm dreadfully ticklish."

"I can't ever make the edges of the bodice meet, so I
tickle to make her squirm," explained Miss Drinker.

"Go on with thy own dressing, Tabitha," ordered Mrs.
Meredith, taking the strings from her hand. "Now breathe
out, Janice."

Miss Meredith drew a long breath, and then expelled it,
instant advantage being taken by her mother to strain the
strings. "Again," she said, holding all that had been gained,
and the operation was repeated, this time the edges of the
frock meeting across the back.

"It hurts," complained the owner of the waist, panting, while
the upper part of her bust rose and fell rapidly in an attempt
to make up for the crushing of the lower lungs.

"I lose all patience with thee, Janice," cried her mother.
"Here when thou hast been given by Providence a waist that
would be the envy of any York woman, that thou shouldst
object to clothes made to set it off to a proper advantage."

"It hurts all the same," reiterated Janice; "and last year I
could beat Jacky Whitehead, but now when I try to run in my
new frocks I come nigh to dying of breathlessness."

"I should hope so!" exclaimed her mother. "A female
of fifteen run with a boy, indeed! The very idea is indelicate.
Now, as soon as thou hast put on thy slippers and goloe-shoes,
go to thy father, who has been told of thy misbehaviour, and
who will reprove thee for it." And with this last damper on
the "lightness of young people," as Mrs. Meredith phrased it,
she once more left the room. It is a regrettable fact that
Miss Janice, who had looked the picture of submission as her
mother spoke, made a mouth, which was far from respectful,
at the departing figure.

"Oh, Janice," said Tabitha, "will he be very severe?"

"Severe?" laughed Janice. "If dear dadda is really angry,
I'll let tears come into my eyes, and then he'll say he's sorry
he hurt my feelings, and kiss me; but if he's only doing it to
please mommy, I'll let my eyes shine, and then he'll laugh
and tell me to kiss him. Oh, Tibbie, what a nice time we could
have if women were only as easy to manage as men!" With
this parting regret, Miss Meredith sallied forth to receive the
expected reproof.

The lecture or kiss received,--and a sight of Miss Meredith
would have led the casual observer to opine that the latter
was the form of punishment adopted,--the two girls mounted
into the big, lumbering coach along with their elders, and were
jolted and shaken over the four miles of ill-made road that
separated Greenwood, the "seat," as the "New York Gazette"
termed it, of the Honourable Lambert Meredith, from the village
of Brunswick, New Jersey. Either this shaking, or something
else, put the two maidens in a mood quite unbefitting the
day, for in the moment they tarried outside the church while the
coach was being placed in the shed, Miss Drinker's face was
frowning, and once again Miss Meredith's nails were dug deep
into the little palms of her hands.

"Yes," Janice whispered. "She put it in the fire. Dadda
saw her."

"And we'll never know if Amaryllis explained that she had
ever loved him," groaned Tabitha.

"If ever I get the chance!" remarked Janice, suggestively.

"Oh, Jan!" cried Tabitha, ecstatically. "Would n't it be
delightsome to be loved by a peasant, and to find he was a
prince and that he had disguised himself to test thy love?"

"'T would be better fun to know he was a prince and torture
him by pretending you did n't care for him," replied
Janice. "Men are so teasable."

"There's Philemon Hennion doffing his hat to us, Jan."

"The great big gawk!" exclaimed Janice. "Does he want
another dish of tea?" A question which set both girls laughing.

"Janice! Tabitha!" rebuked Mrs. Meredith. "Don't be
flippant on the Sabbath."

The two faces assumed demureness, and, filing into the Presbyterian
meeting-house, their owners apparently gave strict heed
to a sermon of the Rev. Alexander McClave, which was later
issued from the press of Isaac Collins, at Burlington, under the
title of:--

"The Doleful State of the Damned, Especially such as go to
Hell from under the Gospel."


II
THE PRINCE FROM OVER THE SEAS

Across the water sounded the bells of Christ Church
as the anchor of the brig "Boscawen," ninety days
out from Cork Harbour, fell with a splash into the
Delaware River in the fifteenth year of the reign of
George III., and of grace, 1774. To those on board, the chimes
brought the first intimation that it was Sunday, for three months
at sea with nothing to mark one day from another deranges the
calendar of all but the most heedful. Among the uncouth and
ill-garbed crowd that pressed against the waist-boards of the
brig, looking with curious eyes toward Philadelphia, several, as
the sound of the bells was heard, might have been observed
to cross themselves, while one or two of the women began to
tell their beads, praying perhaps that the breadth of the just-crossed
Atlantic lay between them and the privation and want
which had forced emigration upon them, but more likely
giving thanks that the dangers and suffering of the voyage
were over.

Scarcely had the anchor splashed, and before the circling
ripples it started had spread a hundred feet, when a small boat
put off from one of the wharfs lining the water front of the
city, with the newly arrived ship as an evident destination; and
the brig had barely swung to the current when the hoarse voice
of the mate was heard ordering the ladder over the side. The
preparation to receive the boat drew the attention of the crowd,
and they stared at its occupants with an intentness which implied
some deeper interest than mere curiosity; low words were
exchanged, and some of the poor frightened creatures seemed
to take on a greater cringe.

[Illustration: "'T is sunrise at Greenwood."]

Seated in the sternsheets of the approaching boat was a
plainly dressed man, whose appearance so bespoke the mercantile
class that it hardly needed the doffing of the captain's cap
and his obsequious "your servant, Mr. Cauldwell, and good
health to you," as the man clambered on board, to announce
the owner of the ship. To the emigrants this sudden deference
was a revelation concerning the cruel and oath-using tyrant at
whose mercy they had been during the weary weeks at sea.

"A long voyage ye've made of it, Captain Caine," said the
merchant.

"Ay, sir," answered the captain. "Another ten days would
have put us short of water, and--"

"But not of rum? Eh?" interrupted Cauldwell.

"As for that," replied the captain, "there 's a bottle or two
that's rolled itself till 't is cruelty not to drink it, and if you'll test
a noggin in the cabin while taking a look at the manifests--

"Well answered," cried the merchant, adding, "I see ye set
deep."

"Ay," said the captain as they went toward the companion-way;
"too deep for speed or safety, but the factors care little
for sailors' lives."

"And a deep ship makes a deep purse."

"Or a deep grave."

"Wouldst die ashore, man?"

"God forbid!" ejaculated the mariner, in a frightened voice.
"I've had my share of ill-luck without lying in the cold
ground. The very thought goes through me like a dash of
spray in a winter v'y'ge." He stamped with his foot and
roared out, "Forrard there: Two glasses and a dipper from
the rundlet," at the same time opening a locker and taking
therefrom a squat bottle. "'T is enough to make a man bowse
himself kissing black Betty to think of being under ground."
He held the black bottle firmly, as if it were in fact a sailor's
life preserver from such a fate, and hastened, so soon as the
cabin-boy appeared with the glasses and dipper, to mix two
glasses of rum and water. Setting these on the table, he took
from the locker a bundle of papers, and handed it to the
merchant.

Twenty minutes were spent on the clearances and manifests,
and then Mr. Cauldwell opened yet another paper.

"Sixty-two in all," he said, with a certain satisfaction in his
voice.

"Sixty-three," corrected the captain.

"Not by the list," denied the merchant.

"Sixty-two from Cork Harbour, but we took one aboard ship
at Bristol," explained the captain.

"Ye must pack them close between decks."

"Ay. The shoats in the long boat had more room. Mr.
Bull-dog would none of it, but slept on deck the whole v'y'ge."

"Mr. Bull-dog?" queried Cauldwell.

"The one your factor shipped at Bristol," explained Caine,
and running over the bundle, he spread before the merchant the
following paper:--

This Indenture, Made the Tenth Day of March in the
fifteenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the
third King of Great Britain, etc. And in the Year of our Lord
One Thousand Seven Hundred and seventy-four, Between
Charles Fownes of Bath in the County of Somerset Labourer of
the one Part, and Frederick Caine of Bristol Mariner of the
other part Witnesseth That the said Charles Fownes for the
Consideration hereinafter mentioned, hath, and by these Presents
doth Covenant, Grant and Agree to, and with the said Frederick
Caine, his Executors, Administrators and Assigns, That the said
Charles Fownes shall and will, as a Faithful Covenant Servant
well and truly serve said Frederick Caine his Executors,
Administrators or Assigns, in the Plantations of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey beyond the Seas, for the space of five years next
ensuing the Arrival in the said Plantation, in the Employment
of a servant. And the said Charles Fownes doth hereby
Covenant and declare himself, now to be of the age of Twenty-one
Years and no Covenant or Contract Servant to any Person
or Persons. And the said Frederick Caine for himself his
Executors, and Assigns, in Consideration thereof do hereby Covenant,
Promise and Agree to and with the said Charles Fownes
his Executors and Administrators, that he the said Frederick
Caine his Executors, Administrators or Assigns, shall and will
at his or their own proper Cost and Charges, with what Convenient
Speed they may, carry and convey or cause to be carried
and conveyed over unto the said Plantations, the said Charles
Fownes and also during the said Term, shall and will at the
like Cost and Charges, provide and allow the said Charles
Fownes all necessary Cloaths, Meat, Drink, Washing, and
Lodging, and Fitting and Convenient for him as Covenant
Servants in such Cases are usually provided for and allowed.
And for the true Performance of the Premises, the said Parties
to these Presents, bind themselves their Executors and Administrators,
the either to the other, in the Penal Sum of Thirty
Pounds Sterling, by these Presents. In Witness whereof they
have hereunto interchangeably set their Hands and Seals, the
Day and Year above written.
                                      The mark of
                                   Charles X Fownes [Seal].

  Sealed and delivered in
     the presence of
  J. Pattison, C. Capon.

These are to certify that the above-named Charles Fownes
came before me Thomas Pattison Deputy to the Patentee at
Bristol the Day and Year above written, and declared himself
to be no Covenant nor Contracted Servant to any Person or
Persons, to be of the Age of Twenty-one Years, not kidnapped nor
enticed but desirous to serve the above-named or his assigns five
Years, according to the Tenor of his Indenture above written
All of which is Registered in the office for that Purpose appointed
by the Letters Patents. In witness whereof I have affixed the
common Seal of the said office.
                                      Thomas Pattison, D. P.

"And why Mr. Bull-dog?" asked Cauldwell, after a glance
at the paper.

"By the airs he takes. Odd's life! if we'd had the Duke of
Cumberland aboard, he'd not have carried himself the stiffer.
From the day we shipped him, not so much as a word has he
passed with one of us, save to threat Mr. Higgins' life, when he
knocked him down with a belaying pin for his da--for his
impertinence. And he nothing but an indentured servant not
able to write his name and like as not with a sheriff at his
heels." The captain's sudden volubility could mean either dislike
or mere curiosity.

"Dost think he's of the wrong colour?" asked the merchant,
looking with more interest at the covenant.

"'T is the dev--'t is beyond me to say what he is. A good
man at the ropes, but a da--a Dutchman for company.
'Twixt he and the bog-trotters we shipped at Cork Harbour
't was the dev--'t was the scuttiest lot I ever took aboard ship."
The rum was getting into the captain's tongue, and making his
usual vocabulary difficult to keep under.

"Have ye no artisans among the Irish?"

"Not so much as one who knows the differ between his two
hands."

"'T is too bad of Gorman not to pick better," growled the
merchant. "There's a great demand for Western settlers, and
Mr. Lambert Meredith writes me to pick him up a good man at
horses and gardening, without stinting the price. 'T would be
something to me to oblige him."

'T is a parcel of raw teagues except for the Bristol man."

"And ye think he's of the light-fingered gentry?"

"As for that," said the captain, "I know nothing about him.
But he came to your factor and wanted to take the first ship
that cleared, and seemed in such a mortal pother that Mr.
Horsley suspicioned something, and gave me a slant to look
out for him. And all the time we lay off Bristol, my fine fellow
kept himself well out of sight."

"Come," said the merchant, rising, "we'll have a look at him.
Mr. Meredith is not a man to be disappointed if it can be
avoided."

Once on deck the captain led the way to the forepart of the
ship, where, standing by himself, and, like the other emigrants,
looking over the rail, but, unlike them, looking not at the city,
but at the water, stood a fellow of a little over medium height,
with broad shoulders and a well-shaped back, despite the ill
form his ragged coat tried to give it. At a slap on the shoulder
he turned about, showing to the merchant a ruddy, sea-tanned
skin, light brown hair, gray eyes, and a chin and mouth hidden
by a two months' beard, still too bristly to give him other than
an unkempt, boorish look.

"Here 's the rogue," announced the captain, with a suggestion
of challenge in the speech, as if he would like to have the
epithet resented. But the man only regarded the officer with
steady, inexpressive eyes.

"Now, my good fellow," asked the merchant, "to what kind
of work have ye been bred?"

The steady gray eyes were turned deliberately from the captain
until the questioner was within their vision. Then, after a
moment's scrutiny of his face, they were slowly dropped so as
to take in the merchant from head to foot. Finally they came
back to the face again, and once more studied it with intentness,
though apparently without the slightest interest.

"Come," said the merchant a little heatedly, and flushing at
the man's coolness. "Answer me. Are ye used to horses and
gardening?"

As if he had not heard the question, the man turned, and
resumed his staring at the water.

"None of your damned impertinence!" roared the captain,
catching up the free part of a halyard coiled on the deck, "or
I'll give you a taste of the rope's end."

The young fellow faced about in sudden passion, which
strangely altered him. "Strike me at your peril!" he challenged,
his arm drawn back, and fist clinched for a blow.

"None but a jail-bird would be so afraid of telling about
himself," cried the captain, though ceasing to threaten. "The
best thing you can do will be to turn the cursed son of a sea
cook over to the authorities, Mr. Cauldwell."

"Look ye, my man," warned the merchant, "ye only bring
suspicion on yourself by such conduct, and ye know best how
far ye want to have your past searched into--"

The man interrupted the merchant.

"Ar bain't much usen to gardening, but ar knows--" he
hesitated for a moment and then went on, "but ar bai willin'
to work."

"Ay," bawled the captain. "Fear of the courts has made
him find his tongue."

"Well," remarked the merchant, "'t is not for my interest
to look too closely at a man I have for sale." Then, as he
walked away with the captain, he continued: "Many a convict
or fugitive has come to the straightabout out here, but hang me
if I like his looks or his manner. However, Mr. Meredith
knows the pot-luck of redemptioners as well as I, and he can
say nay if he chooses." He stopped and eyed the group of
emigrants sourly, saying, "I'll let Gorman hear what I think
of his shipment. He knows I don't want mere bog cattle."

"'T is a poor consignment that can't be bettered in the advertisement,"
comforted the captain, and apparently he spoke
truly, for in the "Pennsylvania Gazette" of September 7th appeared
the following:--

"Just arrived on board the brig 'Boscawen,' Alexander
Caine, Master from Ireland, a number of likely, healthy, men
and women Servants; among whom are Taylors, Barbers,
Foiners, Weavers, Shoemakers, Sewers, Labourers, etc., etc.,
whose indentures are to be disposed of by Cauldwell & Wilson,
or the master on board the Vessel off Market Street Wharff--
Said Cauldwall & Wilson will give the highest prices for good
Pot-Ashes and Bees-Wax."


III
MISS MEREDITH DISCOVERS A VILLAIN

Breakfast at Greenwood was a pleasant meal at a
pleasant hour. For some time previous to it, the family
were up and doing, Mr. Meredith riding over his farm
directing his labourers, Mrs. Meredith giving a like
supervision to her housekeeping, and Janice, attired in a wash
dress well covered by a vast apron, with the aid of her guest,
making the beds, tidying the parlour, and not unlikely mixing
cake or some dessert in the kitchen. Before the meal, Mr. Meredith
replaced his rough riding coat by one of broadcloth, with
lace ruffles, while the working gowns of the ladies were discarded
for others of silk, made, in the parlance of the time, "sack
fashion, or without waist, and termed "an elegant negligee,"--
this word being applied to any frock without lacing strings.

Thus clothed, they gathered at seven o'clock in the pleasant,
low-ceiled dining-room whose French windows, facing westward,
gave glimpses of the Raritan, over fields of stubble and corn-stacks,
broken by patches of timber and orchard. On the
table stood a tea service of silver, slender in outline, and curiously
light in weight, though generous in capacity. Otherwise,
a silver tankard for beer, standing at Mr. Meredith's place
beside a stone jug filled with home brew, balanced by another
jug filled with buttermilk, was all that tended to decoration, the
knives and forks being of steel, and the china simplicity itself.
For the edibles, a couple of smoked herring, a comb of honey,
and a bunch of water-cress, re-enforced after the family had
taken their seals by a form of smoking cornbread, was the
simple fare set forth. But the early rising, and two hours of
work, brought hunger to the table which required nothing more
elaborate as a fillip to tempt the appetite.

While the family still lingered over the meal one warm
September morning, as if loth to make further exertion in the
growing heat, the Sound of a knocker was heard, and a moment
later the coloured maid returned and announced:--

"Marse Hennion want see Marse Meredith."

"Bring him in here, Peg," said Mr. Meredith. "Like as not
the lad 's not breakfasted."

Janice hunched her shoulders and remarked, "Never fear
that Master Hennion is not hungry. He is like the roaring
lion, who 'walketh about seeking whom he may devour.'"

"Black shame on thee, Janice Meredith, for applying the
Holy Word to carnal things," cried her mother.

"Then let me read novels," muttered Miss Meredith, but so
indistinctly as not to be understood.

"Be still, child!" commanded her mother.

"And listen to Philemon glub-glub-bing over his victuals?"

"Philemon is no pig," declared Mrs. Meredith.

"No," assented Janice. "He 's too old for that,"--a remark
which set Mr. Meredith off into an uproarious haw-haw.

"Lambert," protested his wife, "I lose patience with thee
for encouraging this stiff-necked and wayward girl, when she
should be thankful that Providence has made one man who
wants so saucy a Miss Prat-a-pace for a wife."

Miss Meredith, evidently encouraged by her father's humour,
made a mouth, and droned in a sing-song voice: "'What doth
every sin deserve? Every sin deserveth God's wrath and
curse, both in this life and that which is to come.'" Such a
desecration of the Westminster Assembly of Divines' "Shorter
Catechism" would doubtless have produced further and severer
reproof from Mrs. Meredith, but the censure was prevented by
the clump of heavy boots, followed by the entrance of an over-tall,
loosely-built fellow of about eighteen years, whose clothes
rather hung about than fitted him.

"Your servant, marms," was his greeting, as he struggled to
make a bow. "Your servant, squire. Mr. Hitchins, down ter
Trenton, where I went yestere'en with a bale of shearings, asked
me ter come araound your way with a letter an' a bond-servant
that come ter him on a hay-sloop from Philadelphia. So--"

"Having nothing better to do, you came?" interrupted
Janice, with a gravely courteous manner.

"That 's it, Miss Janice; I'm obleeged ter you for sayin' it
better nor I could," said the young fellow, gratefully, while
manifestly straining to get a letter from his pocket.

"Hast breakfasted, Phil?" asked the squire.

Producing the letter with terrible effort, and handing it to
Mr. Meredith, Hennion began, "As for that--"

Here Janice interrupted by saying, "You breakfasted in
Trenton--what a pity!"

"Janice!" snapped her mother, warningly. "Cease thy
clack and set a chair for Philemon this instant."

That individual tried to help the girl, but he was not quick
enough, except to get awkwardly in the way, and bring his
shins in sharp contact with the edge of the chair. Uttering an
exclamation of pain, he dropped his hat,--a proceeding which
set the two girls off into ill-suppressed giggles. But finally,
relieved of his tormenting head-gear, he was safely seated, and
Janice set the dishes in front of him, from all of which he
helped himself liberally. Meanwhile, the squire broke the
seal of the letter and began to read it.

"Wilt have tea or home brew?" asked Mrs. Meredith.

"Beer for me, marm, thank you. An' I think it only kindly
ter say I've hearn talk concernin' your tea drinkin'."

"Let 'em talk," muttered the squire, angrily, looking up
from the letter. "'T is nothing to me."

"But Joe Bagby says there 's a scheme ter git the committee
of Brunswick township ter take it up."

"Not they," fumed Mr. Meredith. "'T is one thing to write
anonymous letters, but quite another matter to stand up and be
counted. As for that scamp Joe--"

"Anonymous letters?" questioned Philemon.

"Ay," sputtered the squire, taking from his pocket a paper
which he at once crushed into a ball, and then as promptly
smoothed out again as a preliminary to handing it to the youth.
With difficulty, for the writing was bad, and the paper old and
dirty, Philemon read out the following:--

Mister Muridith,--
Noing that agenst the centyments of younited Amurika you
still kontiyou to youse tea, thairfor, this is to worn you that
we konsider you as an enemy of our kuntry, and if the same
praktises are kontinyoud, you will shortly receeve a visit from
the kommitty of Tar And Fethers,
                                     Brunswick Township.

"The villains!" cried Janice, flushing. "Who can have
dared to send it?"

"One of my tenants, like as not," snapped the squire.

"They 'd never dare," asserted Janice.

"Dare!" cried the squire. "What daring does it take to
write unsigned threats and nail 'em at night on a door? They
get more lawless every day, with their committees and town
meetings and mobs. 'T is next to impossible to make 'em pay
their rents now, and to hear 'em talk ye'd conclude that they
owned their farms and could not be turned off. A pretty state
of things when a man with twenty thousand acres under leaseholds
has to beg for his rentals, and then does n't get 'em."

"You 'd find it easier ter git your rents, squire, if you only
sided more with folks, an' wa'n't so stiff," suggested the youth.
"A little yieldin' now an' then--"

"Never!" roared Mr. Meredith. "I'll have no Committee
of Correspondence, nor Sons of Liberty, nor Town Meeting
telling me what I may do or not do at Greenwood, any more
than I let the ragtag and bobtail tell me what I was to buy in
'69. Till I say nay, tea is drunk at Greenwood," and the
squire's fist came down on the table with a bang.

"Folks say that Congress will shut up the ports," said the
young man.

"Ay. And British frigates will open 'em. The people are
mad, sir, Bedlam mad, with the idea of liberty, as they call it.
Liberty, indeed! when they try to say what a man shall do in
his own house; what he shall eat; what he shall wear. And
this Congress! We, A and B, elect C to say what the rest of
the alphabet shall do, under penalty of tar and feathers, burned
ricks, or--don't talk to me, sir, of a Congress. 'T is but an
attempt of the mobility to override the nobility of this land, sir.
Once again the plates rattled on the table from the squire's fist,
and it became evident that if Miss Meredith had a temper it
came by inheritance.

"Now, Lambert," interposed his wife, "stop banging the
table and getting hot about nothing. Remember how thee hadst
the colonies ruined in Stamp Act times, and again during the
Association, and it all went over, just as this will. Pour thy
father another tankard of small beer, Janice."

Clearly, what the Committee of Correspondence, and even
the approaching Congress could not do, Mrs. Meredith could,
for the squire settled back quietly into his chair, took a long
swallow of beer, and resumed his letter.

"What does Mr. Cauldwell say, dadda?" inquired the
daughter.

"Hmm," said Mr. Meredith. "That he sends me the likeliest
one from his last shipment. What sort of fellow is he,
Phil?"

Hennion paused to swallow an over-large mouthful, which
almost produced a choking fit, before he could reply. "He
han't a civil word about him, squire--a regular sullen dog."

"Cauldwell writes guardedly, saying it was the best he could
do. Where d' ye leave him, lad?"

"Outside, in my waggon."

"Peg, bid him to come in. We'll have a look at--" Mr.
Meredith consulted the covenant enclosed and read, "Charles
Fownes heigh?"

A moment later, preceded by the maid, Fownes entered.
He took a quick, almost furtive, survey of the room, then
glanced in succession at each of those seated about the table,
till his eyes rested on Janice. There they fixed themselves in
a bold, unconcealed scrutiny, to the no small embarrassment of
the maiden, though the man himself stood in an easy, unconstrained
attitude, quite unheeding the five pairs of eyes staring
at him, or, if conscious, entirely unembarrassed by them.

"Well, Charles, Mr. Cauldwell writes me that ye don't know
much about horses or gardening, but he thinks ye have parts
and can pick it up quickly."

Still keeping his eyes on Miss Meredith, Fownes nodded his
head, with a short, quick jerk, far from respectful.

"But he also says ye are a surly, hot-tempered fellow, who
may need a touch of a whip now and again."

Without turning his head, a second time the man gave a jerk
of it, conveying an idea of assent, but it was the assent of contempt
far more than of accord.

"Come, come," ordered the squire, testily. "Let 's have a
sound of your tongue. Is Mr. Cauldwell right?"

Still looking at Miss Meredith, the man shrugged his shoulders,
and replied, "Bain't vor the bikes of ar to zay Mister
Cauldwell bai a liar." Yet the voice and manner left little doubt
in the hearers as to the speaker's private opinion, and Janice
laughed, partly at the implication, but more in nervousness.

"What kind of work are ye used to?" asked Mr. Meredith.

The man hesitated for a moment and then muttered crossly,
"Ar indentured vor to work, not to bai questioned."

"Then work ye shall have," cried the squire, hotly. "Peg,
show him the stable, and tell Tom--"

"One moment, Lambert," interjected his wife, and then she
asked, "Hast thou had breakfast, Charles?"

Fownes shook his head sullenly.

"Take him to the kitchen and give him some at once, Peg,"
ordered Mrs. Meredith.

For the first time the fellow looked away from Janice, fixing
his eyes on Mrs. Meredith. Then he bowed easily and gracefully,
saying, "Thank you." Apparently unconscious that for
a moment he had left the Somerset burr off his tongue and
the rustic pretence from his manner, he followed Peg to the
kitchen.

If he were unconscious of the slip, it was more than were his
auditors, and for a moment they all exchanged glances in silent
bewilderment.

"Humph!" finally growled the squire. "I like the look of
him still less."

"He holds himself like a gentleman," asserted Tabitha.

"This fellow will need close watching," predicted Mr. Meredith.
"He 's no yokel. He moves like a gentleman or a
house-servant. Yet he had to make his mark on the covenant."

"I think, dadda," said Miss Meredith, in her most calmly
judicial manner, "that the new man is a born villain, and has
committed some terrible crime. He has a horrid, wicked
face, and he stares just as--as--so that one wants to
shiver."

Mrs. Meredith rose. "Janice," she chided, "thou 't too
young to make thy opinions of the slightest value. Go to thy
spinet, child, and don't let me hear any more such foolish
babble. Charles has a good face, and will make a good
servant."

"I don't care what mommy thinks," Miss Meredith confided
to Tabitha in the parlour, as the one took her seat at an embroidery
frame and the other at the spinet. "I know he's a
bad man, and will end by killing one of us and stealing the
silver and a horse, just as Mr. Vreeland's bond-servant did. He
makes me think of the villain in 'The Tragic History of Sir
Watkins Stokes and Lady Betty Artless.'"


IV
AN APPLE OF DISCORD

In the week following his advent the new servant was the
cause of considerable discussion, and, regrettably, of not
a little controversy, among the members of the household
of Greenwood. The squire maintained that "the fellow is
a bad-tempered, lazy, deceitful rogue, in need of much watching."
Mrs. Meredith, on the contrary, invariably praised the
man, and promptly suppressed her husband whenever he began
to rail against him. To Janice, with the violent prejudices of
youth still unmodified by experience and reason, Charles was almost
a special deputy of the individual she heard so unmercifully
thrashed to tatters each Sunday by the Rev. Mr. McClave.
And again, to the contrary, Tabitha insisted with growing fervour
that the servant was a gentleman, possessed of all the
qualities that word implied, plus the most desirable attribute of
all others to eighteenth-century maidens, a romantic possibility.

As a matter of fact, these diverse and contradictory views
had a crossing-point, and accepting this as their mean, Charles
proved himself to be a knowing man with horses, an entirely
ignorant and by no means eager labourer in the little farm work
there was to do, a silent though easily angered being with every
one save Mrs. Meredith, and so clearly above his station that
he was viewed with disfavour, tinctured by not a little fear, by
house-servants, by field hands, and even by Mr. Meredith's
overseer.

[Illustration: "Nay, give me the churn."]

For the most part, Fownes spoke in the West of England
dialect; but whenever he became interested, this instantly slipped
from him, as did his still more ineffective attempt to move and
act the rustic. Indeed, the ease of his movements and the
straightness of his carriage, with a certain indefinable precision
of manner, led to a common agreement among his fellow-labourers
that he had earlier in life accepted the king's shilling.
Granting him to be but one and twenty years of age, as his
covenant stated, and as in fact he looked, his service must have
been shorter than the act of Parliament allowed, and this seeming
bar to their hypothesis caused many winks and shrugs over
the tankards of ale consumed of an evening at the King George
tavern in the village of Brunswick. Furthermore, for some
months the deserter columns of such stray numbers of the
"London Gazette" as occasionally drifted to the ordinary were
eagerly scanned by the loungers, on the possibility that they
might contain some advertisement of a fellow standing five feet
ten, with broad shoulders, light brown hair, straight nose, and
gray eyes, whose whereabout was of interest to His Majesty's
War Office, Whitehall. Neither from this source, however,
nor from any other, did they gain the slightest clue to the
past history of the bond-servant, spy upon the fellow who
would.

Nor was talk of the man limited to farm hands and tavern
idlers, for dearth of new topics in the little community made
him a subject of converse to the two girls during the hours of
spinet practice, embroidery, and sewing, which were their daily
occupations between breakfast and dinner, and, even extended
into the afternoon, if the stint was not completed. Yet all
their discussion brought them no nearer to agreement, Janice
maintaining that Fownes was a villain in posse, if not in esse,
while Tabitha contended that Charles had been disappointed
in a love which he still, none the less, cherished, and which to
her mind accounted in every particular for his conduct. As
such a theory allowed considerable scope to the imagination,
she promptly created several romances about him, in all of
which he was of noble birth, with such other desirable factors
as made him a true hero; and having thus endowed him with
a halo of romance, she could not find words strong enough to
express her thorough-going contempt for the woman whose
disregard and cruelty had driven him across the seas.

"Thee knows, Janice," she argued, when the latter expressed
scepticism, "that the Earl of Anglesey was kidnapped, and
sold in Maryland, so it 's perfectly possible for a nobleman to
be a bond-servant."

"That 's the one case," answered Janice, sagely.

"But things like it are very common in novels," insisted
Tabitha. "And what is more likely for a man disappointed in
love than, in desperation, to indenture himself?"

"I can easily credit a female of taste--yes, any female--
refusing the ill-mannered, bold-staring rogue," said Janice, giving
the coarse osnaburg shirt she was working upon a fretted jerk;
"but to suppose him to be capable of a grand, devoted passion
is as bad as expecting--expecting faithfulness in a dog like
Clarion."

"Clarion?" questioned Tabitha.

"Yes. Have n't you seen how--how--that he--the man,
has taken possession of him? Thomas says the two sneak off
together every chance they get, and sometimes are n't back
till eleven or twelve. I wish dadda would put a stop to it.
Like as not, 't is for pilfering they are bound." Miss Meredith
began anew on the buttonhole, and had she been thrusting
her needle into either man or dog, she could not have sewed
with a more vicious vigour.

"That must be the way he got those rabbits for thy mother."

"I should know he had been a poacher," asserted Janice,
as she contemptuously held up and surveyed at arms-length
the completed shirt. Then she laid it aside with another, and
sighed a weary, "Heigh-ho, those are done. Here I have to
work my fingers to the bone making shirts for him, just because
mommy says he has n't enough clothes,"--a sentence which
perhaps partly accounted for the maiden's somewhat jaundiced
view of Charles.

"Are those for him?" cried Tabitha. "Why didst thou
not tell me? I would have helped thee with them."

"You 'd have been welcome to the whole job. As it is, I've
done them so carelessly that I know mommy will scold me.
But I wasn't going to work myself to death for him!"

"I should have loved--I like shirt-making," fibbed Tabitha.

"And I hate it! Forty-two have I made this year, and
mommy has six more cut out."

There was a moment's silence, and then Tabitha said, "Janice."
For some reason the name seemed to embarrass her, for the
moment it was spoken she coloured.

"What?"

"Dost thee not think--perhaps--if we steal out and take
the shirts to the stable, thy mother will never--?"

"Tibbie Drinker! Go out of the house in a sack? I'd as
soon go out in my night-rail."

"Thee breakfasts in a negligee, even when Philemon is here,"
retorted Miss Drinker. "Wouldst as lief breakfast in thy
shift?"

"No," said Miss Janice, with a wicked sparkle in her eyes,
"because if I did Philemon would come oftener than ever."

"Fie upon thee, Janice Meredith!" cried her friend, "for a
froward, indelicate female."

"And why more indelicate than the men who'd come?"
demanded Janice.

              "'Immodest words admit of no defence,
              For want of modesty is want of sense,'"

quoted Miss Drinker.

"Rubbish!" scoffed Janice, but whether she was referring
to the stanza of the reigning poet of the eighteenth century, or
simply to Miss Tabitha's application of it, cannot be definitely
known. "You know as well as I, Tibbie, that I'd rather have
Philemon, or any other man, see me in my shroud than in my
rail. Come, we'll change our frocks and take a walk."

A half hour later, newly clothed in light dimity gowns, cut
short for walking, and which, in combination with slippers, then
the invariable footgear of ladies of quality, served to display the
"neatly turned ankles" that the beaux of the period so greatly
admired, the girls sallied forth. First a visit was paid to the
stable, to smuggle the shirts from the criticism of Mrs. Meredith,
as well as to entice Clarion's companionship for the walk.
But Thomas, with a grumble, told them that Fownes had stolen
away from the job that had been set for him after dinner, and
that the hound had gone with him.

Their rambling walk brought the girls presently to the river,
but just as they were about to force their way through the fringe
of willows and underbrush which hid the water from view, a
sudden loud splashing, telling of some one in swimming,
gave them pause. Yelps of excitement from Clarion a moment
later served to tell the two who it probably was, and the probability
was instantly confirmed by the voice of Charles, saying:

"'T is sport, old man, is 't not? To get the dirt and transpiration
off one! 'S death! What a climate! 'Twixt the
sun and osnaburg and fustian my skin feels as if I'd been triced
up and had a round hundred."

Exchanging glances, the girls stole softly away from the bank,
neither venturing to speak till out of hearing. As they retired
they came upon a heap of coarse garments, and Tabitha, catching
the arm of her friend, exclaimed:--

"Oh, Jan, look!"

What had caught her eye was the end of a light gold chain
that appeared among the clothes, and both girls halted and
gazed at it as if it possessed some quality of fascination. Then
Tabitha tip-toed forward, with but too obvious a purpose.

"Tibbie!" rebuked Janice, "you shouldn't!"

"Oh, but Jan!" protested Eve, junior. "'T is such a
chance!"

"Not for me," asserted Miss Meredith, proudly virtuous, as
she walked on.

If Miss Drinker had searched for a twelve-month she could
scarce have found a more provoking remark than her spontaneous
exclamation, "Oh! how beautiful she is!"

Janice halted, though she had the moral stamina not to
turn.

"What? The chain?" she asked.

"No! The miniature," responded her interlocutor, in a
tone expressing the most unbounded admiration and delight.
"Such an elegant creature, Jan, and such--"

Her speech ended there, as a crashing in the bushes alarmed
her, and she darted past Janice, who, infected by the guilt of
her companion, likewise broke into a run, which neither ceased
till they had covered a goodly distance. Then Tabitha, for
want of breath, came to a stop, and allowed her friend to overtake
her.

She held up the chain and miniature in her hand. "What
shall I do?" she panted.

"Tibbie, how could you?" ejaculated her horrified friend.

"His coming frighted me so that--oh, I didn't drop it!"

"You must take it back!"

"I'd never dare!"

"Black shame on--!"

"A nice creature, thou, Jan!" interrupted Miss Drinker,
with a sudden carrying of the war into the enemy's camp.
"To tell me to go back when he's sure to be dressing! No
wonder thee makes indelicate speeches."

Miss Meredith, without deigning to reply to this shameful
implication, walked away toward the house.

That Tibbie intended to shirk the consequences of her misdemeanour
was only too clearly proved to Janice, when later
she went to her room to prink for supper, for lying on her
dressing stand was the miniature. Shocked as Miss Meredith
was at the sight, she lifted and examined the trinket.

Bred in colonial simplicity, it seemed to the maid that she
had never seen anything quite so exquisite. A gold case,
richly set with brilliants, encompassed the portrait of a girl of
very positive beauty. After a rapt dwelling on the portrait for
some minutes, further examination revealed the letters W. H.
J. B. interlaced on the back.

Taking the miniature when her toilet had been perfected,
Janice descended to the parlour. As she entered, Tabitha,
already there, jumped up from a chair, in which, a moment
previous she had been carrying on a brown study that apparently
was not enjoyable, and tripped nonchalantly across the
room to the spinet. Seating herself, she struck the keys, and
broke out into a song entitled, "Taste Life's Glad Moments as
They Glide."

Not in the least deflected from her intention, Miss Meredith
marched up to the culprit, the bondsman's property in her
hand, and demanded, "Dost intend to turn thief?"

"Prithee, who 's curious now?" evaded Tibbie. "I knew
thee 'd look at it, for all thy airs."

"Very well, miss," threatened Janice, with much dignity.
"Then I shall take it to him, and narrate to him all the
circumstances."

"Tattle-tale, tattle-tale!" retorted Tabitha, scornfully.

With even greater scorn her friend turned her back, and
leaving the house, walked toward the stable. This took her
through the old-fashioned, hedge-begirt kitchen garden, in
which flowers were grown as if they were vegetables, and
vegetables were grown as if they were flowers. The moment
Janice had passed within the tall row of box, her expression of
mingled haughtiness and determination ended; she came to a
sudden halt, said "Oh!" and then pretended to be greatly
interested in a butterfly. The bravest army can be stampeded
by a surprise, and after having screwed up her spirit to the
point of facing Fownes in his fortress, the stable, Miss Meredith's
courage deserted her on almost stumbling over him a
hundred yards nearer than she expected. So taken aback was
she that all the glib explanation she had planned was forgotten,
and she held out the miniature to him without a single word.

Charles had been walking to the house, and only paused
at meeting Miss Meredith. He glanced at the outstretched
hand, and then let his eyes come back to the girl's face, without
making the slightest motion to take his property.

Tongue-tied and doubly embarrassed by his calm scrutiny,
the young lady stood with flushed cheeks, and with long
black lashes dropped to hide a pair of very shamed eyes,
the personification, in appearance, of guilt.

Whether the girl would have found her tongue, or would
have ended the incident as she was longing to do by taking to her
heels, it is impossible to say. Ere she had time to do either,
the angry voice of the squire broke in upon them.

"Ho, there ye are! Twice have I looked for ye this afternoon,
and I warn ye I'm not the man to take such conduct
from any one, least of all from one of my own servants," he
said as he came toward the pair, the emphasis of his walking
stick and his heels both telling the story of his anger. "What
mean ye, fellow," he continued, "by neglecting the work I
set ye?"

Absolutely unmoved by the reproof, Charles stood as heedless
of it as he had been of the outstretched hand of the
daughter, a hand which had promptly disappeared in the folds
of Miss Meredith's skirt at the first sound of her father's voice.

"A taste of my walking stick ye should have if ye had your
deserts!" went on the squire, now face to face with the
servant.

Without taking his eyes from the girl, Charles laughed.
"Is it fear of me," he challenged, "or fear of the law that prevents
you?"

"What know ye of the law, sirrah?" demanded Mr. Meredith.

"Nothing, when I was fool enough to indenture myself,"
snapped the servant; "but Bagby tells me that 't is forbidden,
under penalty of fine, for a master to strike a servant."

"Joe Bagby!" roared the squire, more angry than ever.
"And how come ye to have anything to do with that scampy
lawyer! Hast been up to some mischief already?"

Again the man laughed. "That is for His Majesty's
Justices of the Peace to discover. Till they do, I shall maintain
that I consulted him concerning the laws governing bond-servants."

"A pretty state the country 's come to!" raged the squire.
"No wonder there is no governing the land, when even servants
think to have the law against their masters. But, harkee, my
fine fellow. If I may not punish ye myself, the Justices may
order ye whipped, and unless ye change your manners I will
have ye up before their next sitting. Meantime, saddle
Joggles as soon as supper is done, and take this paper over
to Brunswick, and post it on the proclamation board of the
Town Hall. And no tarrying, and consulting of tricky lawyers,
understand. If ye are not back by nine, ye shall hear from me."

Striking a sunflower with his cane as a slight vent to his
anger, the master strode away to the house.

His back turned. Janice once again held out the miniature.
"Won't you please take it?" she begged.

"Art tired of it already?" jeered the man.

"I did not take it, Charles," she stammered, "but I knew
of its taking and so brought it back to you."

The man shrugged his shoulders. "'T is not mine, nor
is it aught to me," he said, and passing the girl, walked to the
house.


V
THE VALUE OF HAIR

At the evening meal the farm hands and negro house-servants
remarked in Fownes not merely his customary
unsocial silence, but an abstraction more
obvious than usual. A gird or two from the rougher
of his fellow-labourers was wholly unnoted by him, and though
he ate heartily, it was with such entire unconsciousness of what
he was eating as to make the cook, Sukey, who was inclined to
favour him, question if after all he deserved special consideration
at her hands.

The meal despatched, Charles took his way to the stable,
but some motive caused him to stop at the horse trough, lean
over it, and examine the reflection of his face. Evidently what
he saw was not gratifying, for he vainly tried to smooth down
his short hair, and then passed his hand over the scrub of his
beard. "'T is said clothes make the gentleman," he muttered,
"but methinks 't is really the barber. How many of the belles
of the Pump Room and the Crescent would take me for other
than a clodhopper? 'T was not Charles Lor--Charles what?
--to whom they curtesied and ogled and smirked, 't was to
a becoming wig and a smooth chin." Snapping his fingers
contemptuously, he went in and began to saddle the horse.

A half-hour later, the man rode up the village street of
Brunswick. Hitching Joggles to a post in front of the King
George tavern, he walked to the board on the side of the Town
Hall and Court House. Here, over a three months' old proclamation,
he posted the anonymous note recently received by
the squire, which had been wafered to a sheet of pro patria
paper, and below which the squire had written--

This is to give notice that I despise too much the cowardly
villain who wrote and nailed this on my door to pay any
attention to him. A Reward of two pounds will be given
for any information leading to the discovery of said cowardly
villain.
                                Lambert Meredith.

For a moment the servant stood with a slight smile on his
face at the contradiction; then, with a shrug of his shoulders,
he entered the public room of the tavern. Within the air was
so thick with pipes in full blast, and the light of the two dips
was so feeble, that he halted in order to distinguish the dozen
figures of the occupants, all of whom gave him instant attention.

"Ar want landlord," he said, after a pause.

"Here I be," responded a man sitting at a small table in the
corner, with two half-emptied glasses and a bowl of arrack
punch before him. Opposite to mine host was a thick-set man
of about forty, attired in a brown suit and heavy top-boots, both
of which bore the signs of recent travel.

The servant skirted the group at the large table in the centre
of the room, and taking from his pocket a guinea, laid it on the
table. "Canst 'e give change for thiccy?" he asked.

"I vum!" cried the landlord, as he picked up the coin and
rang it on the table. "'T ain't often we git sight o' goold here.
How much do yer want fer it?"

"Why, twenty-one shillings," replied the servant, with some
surprise in his voice.

"I'll givit you dirty-two," spoke up a Jewish-looking man at
the big table, hurriedly pulling out his pouch and counting
down a batch of very soiled money from it, which he held out
to the servant just as the landlord, too, tendered him some
equally ragged bills.

"Trust Opper to give a shilling less than its worth," jeered
one of the drinkers.

"Bai thiccy money, Bagby?" questioned Charles, looking
suspiciously at both tenders.

"Not much," answered Bagby from the group about the
large table, not one of whom had missed a word of the foregoing
conversation. "'T is shaved beef,"--a joke which called
forth not a little laughter from his companions.

"Will it buy a razor?" asked Fownes, quickly, turning to the
lawyer with a smile.

"Keep it a week and 't will shave you itself," retorted the
joker, and this allusion to the steady depreciation of the colony
paper money called forth another laugh.

"Then 't is not blunt?" responded Charles, but no one save
the traveller at the small table caught the play on words, the
Cockney cant term for money being unfamiliar to American
ears. He smiled, and then studied the bond-servant with more
interest than he had hitherto shown.

Meanwhile, at the first mention of razor, the Jew had left the
room, and he now returned, carrying a great pack, which he
placed upon the table.

"Sir," he said, in an accent which proved his appearance did
not belie his race, while beginning to unstrap the bundle, "I
haf von be-utiful razor, uf der besd--" but here his speech
was interrupted by a roar of laughter.

"You've a sharper to deal with now," laughed the joker,
and another called, "Now ye'll need no razor ter be shaved."

"Chentlemen, chentlemen," protested the peddler, "haf n't
I always dealt fair mit you?" He fumbled in his half-opened
pack, and shoving three razors out of sight, he produced a
fourth, which he held out to the servant. "Dot iss only dree
shillings, und it iss der besd of steel."

"You can trust Opper to know pretty much everything 'bout
steals," sneered Bagby, who was clearly the local wit. "It 's
been his business for twenty years."

"I want a sharp razor, not a razor sharp," said Charles, good-naturedly,
while taking the instrument and trying its edge with
his finger.

"What business hez a bond-servant tew spend money fer a
razor?" demanded the tavern-keeper, for nothing then so
marked the distinction between the well-bred and the unbred
as the smooth faces of the one and the hairy faces of the
other.

"Hasn't he a throat to cut?" demanded one of the group,
"an' hasn't a covenant man reason to cut it?"

"More likes he's goin' a sparkin'," suggested one of the idlers.
"The gal up ter the squire's holds herself pooty high an'
mighty, but like as not she's as plaguey fond of bundling with
a good-looking man on the sly as most wenches."

"If she 's set on that, I'm her man," remarked Bagby.

"Bundling?" questioned the covenant servant. "What 's
that?"

The question only produced a roar of laughter at his ignorance,
during which the traveller turned to the publican and
asked:--

"Who is this hind?"

"'T is a new bond-servant o' Squire Meredith's, who I hearn
is no smouch on horses. Folks think he's a bloody-back who 's
took French leave."

"A deserter, heigh?" said the traveller, once more looking
at the man, who was now exchanging with the peddler the
three-shilling note for the razor. He waited till the trade had
been consummated, and then suddenly said aloud, in a sharp,
decisive way, "Attention! To the left--dress!

Fownes' body suddenly stiffened itself, his hands dropped to.
his sides, and his head turned quickly to the left. For a second
he held this position, then as suddenly relaxing himself,
he turned and eyed the giver of the order.

"So ho I my man. It seems ye have carried Brown Bess,"
said the traveller, giving the slang term for the musket.

Flushed in face, Fownes wheeled on the man hotly, while
the whole room waited his reply in silence. "Thou liest!" he
asserted.

"Thou varlet!" cried the man so insulted, flushing in turn,
as he sprang to his feet and caught up from the table a heavy
riding-whip.

As he did so, the bond-servant's right hand went to his hip,
as if instinctively seeking something there. The traveller's eyes
followed the impulsive gesture, even while he, too, made a
motion more instinctive than conscious, by stepping backward,
as if to avoid something. This motion he checked, and
said--

"No. Bond-servants don't wear bayonets."

Again the colour sprang to Fownes' face, and his lips parted
as if an angry retort were ready. But instead of uttering it, he
turned and started to leave the room.

"Ay," cried the traveller, "run, while there 's time, deserter."

Fownes faced about in the doorway, with a smile on his face
not pleasant to see, it was at once so contemptuous and so
lowering. Yet when he spoke there was an amused, almost
merry note in his voice, as if he were enjoying something.

"Ar bain't no more deserter than thou baist spy," he retorted,
as he left the tavern and went to where his horse was
tethered. Unfastening him, he stood for a moment stroking
the animal's nose.

"Joggles," he confided, "I fear, despite the praise the fair
ones gave of my impersonation of 'The Fashionable Lover,'
that I am not so good an actor as either Garrick or Barry. I
forget, and I lose my temper. So, a bond-servant should cut
his throat," he continued, as he swung lightly into the saddle.
"I fear 't is the only way I can go undiscovered. Fool that I
was to do it in a moment of passion. Five years of slavery!"
Then he laughed. "But then I'd never have seen her! Egad,
if she could be painted as she looked to-day by Reynolds or
Gainsborough, 'twould set more than my blood glowing!
There's a prize, Joggles! Beauty, wealth, and freedom, all in
one. She'd be worth a tilt, too, if for nothing but the sport of
it. We'll shave, make a dandy of ourselves, old man--"
Then the servant paused--"and, like a fool, be recognised by
some fellow like Clowes--what does he here?--but for my
beard, and that he'd scarce expect to meet Charles--" Fownes
checked himself, scowling. "Charles Nothing, a poor son of
a gun of a bond-servant. Have done with such idiot schemes,
man," he admonished. "For what did you run, if 't was not
to bury yourself? And now you 'd risk all for a petticoat."
Taking from his pocket the razor, he threw it into the bushes
that lined the road, saying as he did so, "Good-by, gentility."


VI
MEN ARE DECEIVERS EVER

The departure of the bond-servant, leaving the sting
of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward
the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of
the roomful when he inquired, "What did Fownes
call you spy for?"

"Nay, man, he called me not that," denied the stranger,
"unless he meant to call himself a deserter as well. Landlord,
a bowl of swizzle for the company! Gentlemen, I am
Lincolnshire born and bred. My name is John Evatt, and I
am travelling through the country to find a likely settling place
for six solid farmers, of whom I am one. Whom did you say
was yon rogue's master?"

"Squire Meredith," informed mine host, now occupied in
combining the rum, spruce beer, and sugar at the large table.

"And what sort of man is he?" asked Evatt, bringing his
glass from the small table and taking his seat among the rest.

"He 's as hot-tempered an' high an' mighty as King George
hisself," cried one of the drinkers. "But I guess his stinkin'
pride will come down a little afore the committee of Brunswick 's
through with him."

"Let thy teeth keep better guard over thy red rag, Zerubbabel,"
rebuked Joe Bagby, warningly. "We want no rattlepates
to tell us--or others--what 's needed or doing."

"This Meredith 's a man of property, eh?" asked Evatt.

"He 's been so since he married Patty Byllynge," replied the
publican. "Afore then he war n't nothin' but a poor young
lawyer over tew Trenton."

"And who was Patty Byllynge?"

"You don't know much 'bout West Jersey, or I guess you 'd
have heard of her," surmised Bagby. "'T is n't every girl brings
her husband a pot of money and nigh thirty thousand acres of
land. Folks tell that before the squire got her, the men was about
her like--" the speaker used a simile too coarse for repetition.

"So ho!" said the traveller. "Byllynge, heigh? Now I
begin to understand. A daughter--or granddaughter--of one
of the patentees?"

"Just so. In the old man's day they held the lands all along
this side of the Raritan, nigh up to Baskinridge, but they sold a
lot in the forties."

"Then perhaps this is the place to bargain about a bit?
The land looked rich and warm as I rode along this afternoon."

"'T ain't no use tryin' ter buy of the new squire," remarked
one man. "He won't do nothin' but lease. He don't want no
freemen 'bout here."

"Yer might buy o' Squire Hennion. He sells now an' agin,"
suggested the innkeeper."

"Who's he?" demanded Evatt.

"Another of the monopolisers who got a grant in the early
days, before the land was good for anything," explained Bagby.
"His property is further down."

"Ye 'd better bargain quick, if ye want any," spoke up an
oldster. "Looks like squar's son was a-coortin' squar's daughter,
an' mayhaps her money'll make old Squar Hennion less
put tew it fer cash."

"So Squire Meredith is n't popular?"

"He'll find out suthin' next time he offers fer Assembly,"
asserted one of the group.

"He 's a member of Assembly, is he?" questioned Evatt.
"Then he's all right on--he belongs to the popular party?"

"Not he!" cried several.

"He was agin the Association, tried tew prevent our sendin'
deputies tew Congress, an' boasts that tea 's drunk at his table,"
said the landlord.

"'T won't be for long," growled Bagby.

"Then how comes it that ye elect him Assemblyman?"

"'T is his tenants do it," spoke up the lawyer. "They don't
have the pluck to vote against him for fear of their leaseholds.
And so 't is with the rest. The only way we can get our way is
by conventions and committees. But get it we will, let the
gentry try as they please."

"Well, gentlemen," said Evatt, "here 's the swizzle. Glasses
around, and I'll give ye a toast ye can all drink: May your freedom
never be lessened by either Parliament or Congress!"

Two hours of drinking and talking followed, and when the
last of the tipplers had staggered through the door, and Evatt,
assisted by the publican, had reeled rather than walked upstairs
to his room, if he was not fully informed as to the locality of
which the tavern was the centre, it was because his brain was
too fuddled by the mixed drink, and not because tongues had
been guarded.

Eighteenth-century heads made light of drinking bouts, and
Evatt ate a hearty breakfast the next morning. Thus fortified,
he called for his horse, and announced his intention of seeing
Squire Meredith "about that damned impertinent varlet."

Arrived at Greenwood, it was to find that the master of the
house was away, having ridden to Bound Brook to see some of
his more distant tenants; but in colonial times visitors were
such infrequent occurrences that he was made welcome by the
hostess, and urged to stay to dinner. "Mr. Meredith will be
back ere nightfall," she assured him, "and will deeply regret
having missed thee if thou rides away."

"Madam," responded Evatt, "American hospitality is only
exceeded by American beauty."

It was impossible not to like the stranger, for he was a capital
talker, having much of the chat of London, tasty beyond all
else to colonial palates, at his tongue's tip. With a succession
of descriptions or anecdotes of the frequenters of the Park and
Mall, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, he entertained them at table,
the two girls sitting almost open-mouthed in their eagerness
and delight.

The meal concluded, the ladies regretfully withdrew, leaving
Evatt to enjoy what he chose of a decanter of the squire's best
Madeira, which had been served to him, visitors of education
being rare treats indeed. Like all young peoples, Americans
ducked very low to transatlantic travellers, and, truly colonial,
could not help but think an Englishman of necessity a superior
kind of being.

The guest filled his glass, unbuttoned the three lower buttons
of his waistcoat, and slouched back in his chair. Then he put
the wine to his lips, and holding the swallow in his mouth to
prolong the enjoyment, a look of extreme contentment came over
his visage. And if he had put his thoughts into words, he
would have said:--

"By Heavens! What wine and what women! The one
they smuggle, but where get they the other? In a rough new
country who'd think to encounter greater beauty and delicacy
than can be seen skirting the Serpentine? Such eyes, such a
waist, and such a wrist! And those cheeks--how the colour
comes and goes, telling everything that she would hide! And
to think that some bumpkin will enjoy lips fit for a duke. Burn
it! If 't were not for my task, I'd have a try for Miss Innocence
and--" The man glanced out of the window and let his
eyes wander over the landscape, while he drained his glass--
"Thirty thousand acres of land!" he said aloud, with a smack
of pleasure.

His eyes left off studying the fields to fix themselves on
Janice, who passed the window, with the garden as an evident
destination, and they followed her until she disappeared within
the opening of the hedge. "There's a foot and ankle," he exclaimed
with an expression on his face akin to that it had worn
as he tasted the Madeira. "'T would fire enough sparks in
London to set the Thames all aflame!" He reached for the
Madeira once more, but after removing the stopper, he hesitated
a moment, then replacing it, he rose, buttoned his waistcoat,
and taking his hat from the hall, he slipped through the window
and walked toward the garden.

Finding that Janice was not within the hedge-row, Evatt
passed across the garden quickly and discovered the young
lady standing outside the stable, engaged in the extremely
undignified occupation of whistling. Her reason for the action
was quickly revealed by the appearance of Clarion; and still
unconscious that she was watched, after a word with the dog,
they both started toward the river.

A few hasty strides brought the man up with the maiden,
and as she slightly turned to see who had joined her, he said,
"May I walk with you, Miss Meredith? I intended a stroll
about the farm, and it will be all the pleasanter for so fair a
guide."

Shyly but eagerly the girl assented, and richly rewarded was
she in her own estimate by what the visitor had to tell. More
gossip of court, of the lesser world of fashion, and of the
theatre, he retailed: how the king walked and looked, of the
rivalry between Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Baddeley, of Charles Fox's
debts and eloquence, of the vogue of Cecilia Davis, or
"L'Inglesina." To Janice, hungry with the true appetite of
provincialism, it was all the most delicious of comfits. To
talk to a man who could imitate the way the Duke of
Gloucester limped at a levee when suffering from the gout, and
who was able to introduce a story by saying, "As Lady Rochford
once said to me at one of her routs--" was almost like
meeting those distinguished beings themselves. Janice not
merely failed to note that the man paid no heed whatever to the
land they strolled over, but herself ceased to give time or
direction the slightest thought.

"Oh!" she broke out finally, in her delight, "won't Tibbie
be sorry when she knows what she's missed? And, forsooth, a
proper pay out for her wrong-doing it is!"

"What mean ye by that?" questioned Evatt.

"She deserves to have it known, but though she called me
tattle-tale, I'm no such thing," replied Janice, who in truth
was still hot with indignation at Miss Drinker, and wellnigh
bursting to confide her grievance against her whilom friend
to this most delightful of men. "Doubtless, you observed
that we are not on terms. That was why I came off without
her."

Evatt, though not till this moment aware of the fact, nodded
his head gravely.

"'T is all her doings, though she'd be glad enough to make
it up if I would let her. A fine frenzy her ladyship would be
in, too, if she dreamt he'd given me the miniature."

"A miniature!" marvelled the visitor, encouragingly. "Of
whom?"

"'T is just what--Oh, I think I'll tell thee the whole tale
and get thy advice. I dare not go to mommy, for I know
she'd make me give it up, and dadda being away, and Tibbie
in a snip-snap, I have no one to--and perhaps--I'd never
tell thee to shame Tibbie, but because I need advice and--"

"A man with half an eye would know you were no tale-bearer,
Miss Janice," her companion assured her.

Thus prompted and enticed, the girl poured out the whole
story. "I wish I could show you the picture," she ended.
"She is the most beautiful creature I ever saw."

"Hast never looked in a mirror, Miss Janice?"

"Now thou 't just teasing."

"I' faith, 't is the last thought in my mind," said Evatt, heartily.

"You really think me pretty?" questioned the girl, with
evident delight if uncertainty.

Evatt studied the eager, guileless face questioningly turned to
him, and had much ado to keep from smiling.

"'T is impossible not to think it," he replied.

"Even after seeing the court beauties?" demanded Janice,
half doubtful and half joyous.

"Not one but would have to give the pas to ye, Miss Janice,"
protested Evatt, "could ye but be presented at St. James's."

"How lovely!" cried Janice, ecstatically, and then in sudden
abasement asserted, "Oh, I know you are--you are
only making fun of me!"

"Now, burn me, if I am!" insisted the man, with such
undoubted admiration in his manner as to confirm his words to
the girl. "By Heaven!" he marvelled to himself. "Who 'd
have believed such innocence possible? 'T is Mother Eve
before the fall! She knows nothing." A view of woman
likely to get Mr. Evatt into trouble. There is very little
information concerning the ante-prandial Eve, but from later
examples of her sex, it is safe to affirm that the mother of the
race knew several things before partaking of the tree of knowledge.
Man only is born so stupid as to need education.

"Why canst thou not let me have sight of this wondrous
female?" he went on aloud. "Surely thou art not really
fearsome to brave comparison."

"'T is not that, indeed," denied Janice, colouring, "but--
well--in a moment." The girl turned her back to Mr. Evatt,
and in a moment faced him once more, the miniature in her
hand. "Isn't she beautiful?"

Evatt looked at the miniature. "That she is," he assented.
"And strike me dumb, but she reminds me of some woman
I've once seen in London."

"Oh, how interesting!" exclaimed the girl. "What was
her name?"

"'T is exactly that I am asking myself."

"He must be well-born," argued Janice, "to have her
miniature; look at the jewels in her hair."

"Ah, my child, there 's more than the well-born wear--"
the man stopped short. "How know ye," he went on, "that
the bondsman comes by it rightly? The frame is one of price."

"I don't," the girl replied, "and the initials on the back
are n't his."

"'W. H. J. B.,'" read Evatt.

"He may have changed his name," suggested Janice.

"True," assented the man, with a slight laugh; "that 's a
mighty clever thought and gives us a clue to his real one."

"Perhaps you've heard of a man in London with a name to
fit W. H. J. B.?" said the maid, inquiringly.

Evatt turned away to conceal an unsuppressable smile,
while thinking, "The innocent imagines London but another
Brunswick!"

"Dost think I should make him take it back?" asked Janice.

"Certainly not," replied her advise; responding to the only
too manifest wish of the girl.

"Then dost think I should speak to mommy or dadda?"

"'T is surely needless! The fellow refuses it, and so 't is
yours till he demands it."

"How lovely! Oh, I'd like to be home this instant, to see
how 't would appear about my neck. Last night I crept out of
bed to have a look, but Tibbie turned over, and I thought me
she was waking. I think I'll go at once and--"

"And end our walk?" broke in Evatt, reproachfully.

"'T is nearly tea-time," replied Janice, pointing to the sun.
"How the afternoon has flown!"

"Thanks to my charming companion," responded the man,
bowing low.

"Now you are teasing again," cried Janice. "I don't like to
be made fun--"

"'T is my last thought," cried Evatt, with unquestionable
earnestness, and possessing himself of Janice's hand, he stooped
and kissed it impetuously and hotly.

The colour flooded up into the maiden's face and neck at the
action, but still more embarrassing to her was the awkward
pause which ensued, as they set out on their return. She could
think of nothing to say, and the stranger would not help her.
"Let her blush and falter and stammer," was his thought. "Every
minute of embarrassment is putting me deeper in her thoughts."


VII
SPIDER AND FLY

Fortunately for the girl, the distance to the house
was not great, and the rapid pace she set in her stress
quickly brought them to the doorway, which she
entered with a sigh of relief. The guest was at once
absorbed by her father, and Janice sought her room.

As she primped, the miniature lay before her, and occasionally
she paused for a moment to look at it. Finally, when properly
robed, she picked it up and held it for a moment. "I wonder
if she broke his heart?" she soliloquised. "I don't see how he
could help loving her; I know I should." Janice hesitated for
a moment, and then tucked the miniature into her bosom. "If
only Tibbie wasn't--if--we could talk about it," she sighed,
as she pinned on her little cap of lace above the hair dressed
high a la Pompadour. "Why did she have to be--just as so
many important things were to happen!" Miss Meredith
looked at her double in the mirror, and sighed again. "Mr.
Evatt must have been laughing at me," she said, "for she is so
much prettier. But I should like to know why Charles always
stares so at me."

In the meantime, Evatt, without so much as an allusion to the
bond-servant, had presented a letter from a New Yorker, introducing
him to the squire, and by the confidence thus established
he proceeded to question Mr. Meredith long and carefully, not
about farming lands and profits, but concerning the feeling of
the country toward the questions then at issue between Great
Britain and America. He made as they talked an occasional
note, and the interview ended only with Peg's announcement of
supper. Nor was this allowed to terminate the inquiry, for the
squire, as Mrs. Meredith had foreseen, insisted on Evatt's
spending the night, and Charles was accordingly ordered to ride
over to the inn for the traveller's saddlebags. After the ladies
had left the two men at the table, the questioning was resumed
over the spirits and pipes, and not till ten o'clock was passed
did Evatt finally rise. Clearly he must have pleased the squire
as well as he had the dames, for Mr. Meredith, with the
hospitality of the time, pressed him heartily to stay for more
than the morrow, assuring him of a welcome at Greenwood for
as long as he would make it his abiding spot.

"Nothing, sir, would give me greater pleasure," responded
Evatt, warmly, "but in confidence to ye, as a friend of government,
I dare to say that my search for a farm is only the ostensible
reason for my travels. I am executing an important and
delicate mission for our government, and having already journeyed
through the colonies to the northward, I must still travel
through those of the south. 'T is therefore quite impossible for
me to tarry more than the night. I should, in fact, not have
dared to linger thus long were it not that your name was on the
list given me by Lord Dartmouth of those to be trusted and
consulted. And the information ye have furnished me concerning
this region has proved that his Lordship did not err in his
opinion as to your knowledge, disposition, and ability."

This sent the squire to his pillow with a delightful sense of
his own importance, and led him to confide to the nightcap on
the pillow beside him that "Mr. Evatt is a man of vast insight
and discrimination." Regrettable as it is to record, the visitor,
before seeking his own pillow, mixed some ink powder in a mug
with a little water and proceeded to add to a letter already
begun the following paragraph:--

[Illustration: "The British ran!"]

"From thence I rode to Brunswick, a small Town on the
Raritan. Here I find the same division of Sentiment I have
already dwelt upon to your Lordship. The Gentry, consisting
hereabouts of but two, are sharply opposed to the small Farmers
and Labourers, and cannot even rely upon their own Tenantry
for more than a nominal support. Neither of the great Proprietors
seem to be Men of sound Judgment or natural Popularity,
and Mr. Lambert Meredith--a name quite unknown
to your Lordship, but of some consequence in this Colony
through a fortunate Marriage with a descendant of one of the
original Patentees--at the last Election barely succeeded in
carrying the Poll, and is represented to be a Man of much
impracticality, hot-tempered, a stickler over trivial points, at
odds with his Neighbours, and not even Master of his own
Household. To such Men, my Lord, has fallen the Contest, on
behalf of Government, while opposed to them are self-made
Leaders, of Eloquence, of Force, and; most of all, of Dishonesty.
Issues of Paper Money, escape from all Taxation, free Lands,
suspensions of Debts--such and an hundred other tempting
Promises they ply the People with, while the Gentry sit helpless,
save those who, seeing how the Tide sets, throw Principles to
the Wind, and plunge in with the popular Leaders. Believe
me, my Lord, as I have urged already, a radical change of
Government, and a plentiful sprinkling of Regiments, will
alone prevent the Disorders from rising to a height that
threatens Anarchy."

Though the visitor was the last of the household abed, he was
early astir the next morning, and while Charles was beginning
his labours of the day, by leading each horse to the trough in
the barnyard, Evatt joined him.

"We made a bad start at our first meeting, my man," he
said in a friendly manner, "and I have only myself to blame
for 't. One should keep his own secrets."

"'T is a sorry calling yours would be if many kept to that,"
replied Fownes, with a suggestion of contempt.

Evatt bit his lip, and then forced a smile. "The old saying
runs that three could keep a secret if two were but dead."

Charles smiled. "My two will never trouble me," he said
meaningly, "so save your time and breath."

"Hadst best not be so sure," retorted Evatt, in evident irritation.
"'Twixt thine army service, the ship that fetched thee
on, and that miniature, I have more clues than have served to
ferret many a secret."

"And entirely lack the important one. Till you have that, I
don't fear you. What is more, I'll tell you what 't is."

"What?" asked the man.

"A reward," sneered Fownes.

"I see I've a sly tyke to deal with," said the man. "But
if ye choose not--" The speaker checked himself as Janice
came through the opening in the hedge, and the two stood
silently watching her as she approached.

"Charles," she said, when within speaking distance, while
holding out the miniature, "I've decided you must take this."

Charles smiled pleasantly. "Then 't is your duty to make
me, Miss Meredith," he replied, folding his arms.

"Won't you please take it?" begged Janice, not a little non-plussed
by her position, and that Evatt should be a witness of
it. "We know it belongs to you, and 't is too valuable for
me to--"

"How know you that?" questioned the man, still smiling
pleasantly.

"Because 't was with your clothes when you went in swimming,"
said Janice, frankly.

"Miss Meredith," replied Charles, "the word of a poor devil
of a bond-servant can have little value, but I swear to you that
that never belonged to me, and that I therefore have no right
to it. If it gives you any pleasure, keep it."

"That is as good as saying ye stole it," asserted Evatt.

Charles smiled contemptuously. "'All are not thieves
whom dogs bark at,'" he retorted. "Nor are all of us sneaks
and spies," he added, as, turning, he led away the horse toward
the stable.

"Yon fellow does n't stickle at calling ye names, Miss Meredith,"
said Evatt.

"He has no right to call me a spy," cried the girl, indignantly.

"His words deserve no more heed than what he said t'other
night at the tavern of ye."

"What said he at the tavern?" demanded Janice.

"'T is best left unspoken."

"I want to know what he said of me," insisted Miss Meredith.

"'T would only shame ye."

"He--he told of--he did n't tell them I took the miniature?"
faltered Janice.

Again Evatt bit his lip, but this time to keep from smiling.
"Worse than that, my child," he replied.

"Why should he insult me?" protested Janice, proudly,
but still colouring at the possibility.

"Ye do right to suppose it unlikely. Yet 't is so, and while
I can hardly hope that my word will be taken for it, his lies to
us a moment since prove that he is capable of any untruth."

Evatt spoke with such honesty of manner, and with such an
apparent lack of motive for inventing a tale, that Janice became
doubtful. "He could n't insult me," she said, "for I--I
have n't done anything."

"'T is certain that he did. Had I but known ye at the time,
Miss Janice, he should have been made to swallow his coarse
insult. 'T was for that I sought him this morning. Had ye
not interrupted us, 't would have fared badly for him."

"You were very kind," said Janice, dolefully, beginning, more
from his manner than his words, to believe Evatt. "I did n't
know there were such bad men in the world. And for him to
say it at the tavern, where 't will be all over the county in no
time! Was it very bad?"

"No one would believe a redemptioner," replied Evatt.
"Yet had I the right--"

"Marse Meredith send me to tell youse come to breakfast,"
interrupted Peg from the gateway in the box.

"Why!" exclaimed the girl. "It can't be seven."

"The squire ordered it early, that I might be in the saddle
betimes," explained Evatt, and then as the girl started toward
the house, he checked the movement by taking her hand.
"Miss Janice," he said, "in a half-hour I shall ride away--not
because 't is my wish, but because I'm engaged in an important
and perilous mission--a mission--can ye keep a secret--even
from--from your father and mother?"

Janice was too young and inexperienced to know that a
secret is of all things the most to be avoided, and though her
little hand, in her woman's intuition that all was not right, tried
feebly to free itself, she none the less answered eagerly if half-doubtfully,
"Yes."

"I am sent here under an assumed name--by His Majesty.
Ye--I was indiscreet enough with ye, to tell--to show that I
was other than what I pretend to be, but I felt then and now
that I could trust ye. Ye will keep secret all I say?"

Again Janice, with her eyes on the ground, said, "Yes."

"I must do the king's work, and when 't is done I return to
England and resume my true position, and ye will never again
hear of me--unless--" The man paused, with his eyes fixed
on the downcast face of the girl.

"Unless?" asked Janice, when the silence became more
embarrassing than to speak.

"Unless ye--unless ye give me the hope that by first returning
here--as your father has asked me to do--that I
may--may perhaps carry ye away with me. Ah, Miss Janice,
't is an outrage to keep such beauty hidden in the wilds of
America, when it might be the glory of the court and the toast
of the town."

Again a silence ensued, fairly agonising to the bewildered
and embarrassed girl, which lengthened, it seemed to her, into
hours, as she vainly sought for some words that she might
speak.

"Please let go my hand," she begged finally.

"Not till you give me a yea or nay.

"But I can't--I don't--" began Janice, and then as footsteps
were heard, she cried, "Oh, let me go! Here comes
Charles."

"May I come back?" demanded Evatt.

"Yes," assented the girl, desperately.

"And ye promise to be secret?"

"I promise," cried Janice, and to her relief recovered her
hand, just as Charles entered the garden.

Like many another of her sex, however, she found that to
gain physical and temporary freedom she had only enslaved
herself the more, for after breakfast Evatt availed himself of a
moment's interest of Mrs. Meredith's in the ordering down of
his saddle-bags, and of the squire's in the horse, to say to Janice,
aside:--

"I gave ye back your hand, Janice, but remember 't is mine,"
and before the girl could frame a denial, he was beside Mr.
Meredith at the stirrup, and, ere many minutes, had ridden
away, leaving behind him a very much flattered, puzzled, and
miserable demoiselle.


VIII
SEVERAL BURNING QUESTIONS

The twenty-four hours of Evatt's visit troubled Janice
in recollection for many a day, and marked the beginning
of the most distinct change that had come to
her. The experience was in fact that which befalls
every one somewhere between the ages of twelve and thirty,
by which youth first learns to recognise that life is not mere
living, but is rather the working out of a strange problem compounded
of volition and necessity, accident and fatality. The
pledge of secrecy preyed upon her, the stranger's assumption
that she had bound herself distressed her, and the thought
that she had been the subject of tavern talk made her furious.
Yet she had promised concealment, she was powerless to write
to Evatt denying his pretension, and she could not counteract
a slander the purport of which was unknown to her. Had she
and Tibbie but been on terms, she might have gained some
relief by confiding her woes to her, but that young lady's visit
came to an end so promptly after the departure of Evatt that
restoration of good feeling was only obtained in the parting
kiss. For the first time in her life, Janice's head would keep
on thinking after it was resting on its pillow, and many a time
that enviable repository was called upon to dry her tears and
cool her burning cheeks. Never, it seemed to her, had man
or woman borne so great a burden of trouble.

The change in the girl was too great not to be noticed by
the household of Greenwood. Mrs. Meredith joyfully confided
to the Rev. Mr. McClave that she thought an "effectual
calling" had come to her daughter, and that Janice was in a
most promising condition of unhappiness. Thus encouraged,
the divine, who was a widower of forty-two, with five children
sadly needing a woman's care, only too gladly made morning
calls on the daughter of his wealthiest parishioner, and in place
of the discussions with Tibbie over romance in general, and
the bond-servant in particular, as they sewed or knitted, Janice
was forced to attend to long monologues specially prepared
for her benefit, on what to the presbyter were the truly burning
questions of justification, adoption, and sanctification. What
is more, she not only listened dutifully, but once or twice was
even moved to tears, to the enormous encouragement of Mr.
McClave. The squire, who highly resented the lost vivacity
and the new seriousness, insisted that the "girl sha'n't be made
into a long-faced, psalm-singing hypocrite;" but not daring to
oppose what his wife approved, he merely expressed his irritation
to Janice herself, teasing and fretting her scarcely less
than did Mr. McClave.

Not the least of her difficulties was her bearing toward the
bondsman. Conditions were still so primitive that the relations
between master and servant were yet on a basis that
made the distinctions between them ones of convenience rather
than convention, and thus Janice was forced to mark out a
new line of conduct. At first she adopted that of avoidance
and proud disregard of him, but his manner toward her continued
to convey such deference that the girl found her attitude
hard to maintain, and presently began to doubt if he
could be guilty of the imputation. Nor could she be wholly
blind to the fact that the groom had come to take a marked
interest in her. She noted that he made occasion for frequent
interviews, and that he dropped all pretence of speaking to
her in his affected Somerset dialect. When now she ventured
out of doors, she was almost certain to encounter him, and
rarely escaped without his speaking to her; while he often
came into the kitchen on frivolous pretexts when she was
working there, and seemed in no particular haste to depart.

Several times he was detected by Mrs. Meredith thus idling
within doors, and was sharply reproved for it. Neither to this,
nor to the squire's orders that he should put an end to his
"night-walking" and to his trips to the village, did he pay
the slightest heed.

Fownes entered the kitchen one morning in November
while Janice and Sukey were deep in the making of some
grape jelly, carrying an armful of wood; for the bond-servant
for once had willingly assumed a task that had hitherto been
Tom's. Putting the logs down in the wood-box, he stood
with back to the fire, studying Miss Meredith, as, well covered
with a big apron, with rolled up sleeves, flyaway locks, and
flushed cheeks, she pounded away in a mortar, reducing loaf
sugar to usable shape.

"Now youse clar right out of yar," said Sukey, who, though
the one servant who was fond of Charles, like all good cooks,
was subject to much ferment of mind when preserving was to
the fore. "We uns doan want no men folks clutterin' de fire."

"Ah, Sukey," besought Charles, appealingly, "there 's a
white frost this morning, and 't is bitter outside. Let me
just warm my fingers?"

Sukey promptly relented, but the chill in Fownes' fingers was
clearly not unendurable, for in a moment he came to the
table, and putting his hand over that of Janice, which held
the pestle, he said:--

"Let me do the crushing. 'T is too hard work for you."

"I wish you would," Miss Meredith somewhat breathlessly
replied. "My arms are almost ready to drop off."

"'T would set the quidnuncs discussing to which of the
Greek goddesses they belonged," remarked Fownes. Then
he was sorry he had said it, for Miss Meredith promptly
unrolled her sleeves; not because in her secret heart she did
not like the speech, but because of a consciousness that
Charles was noticing what the Greek goddesses generally
lack. A low-cut frock was almost the unvarying dress of the
ladies, there was nothing wrong in the display of an ankle,
and elbow sleeves were very much the vogue, but to bare the
arms any higher was an immodesty not permitted to those
who were then commonly termed the "bon ton."

This addition to the working staff promptly produced an
order from Sukey for Janice to assume the duty of stirring a
pot just placed over the fire, "while I 'se goes down cellar an'
cars a shelf for them jellies to set on. Keep a stirrin',
honey, so 's it won't burn," was her parting injunction.

No sooner was the cook out of hearing than Charles spoke:
"For two days," he said in a low voice, "I have tried to get
word with you. Won't you come to the stable when I am
there?"

"Are you going to crush that sugar?" asked Miss Meredith.

"Art going to come to the stable?" calmly questioned
Charles.

"Give me the pestle!" said Janice, severely.

"Because if you won't," continued the groom, "I shall
have to say what I want now."

"I prefer not to hear it," Janice announced, moving from
the fire.

"You must keep on stirring, or 't will burn, Miss Janice,"
the man reminded her, taking a mean advantage of the
situation.

Janice came back and resumed her task, but she said, "I
don't choose to listen."

'T is for thy father's sake I ask it."

"How?" demanded the girl, looking up with sudden
interest.

"I went to the village t' other night," replied the man, "to
drill--" Then he checked himself in evident disconcertion.

"Drill?" asked Janice. "What drill?"

"Let us call it quadrille, since that is not the material part,"
said Charles. "What is to the point is that after--after
doing what took me, I stayed to help in Guy Fawkes' fun on
the green."

"Well?" questioned the girl, encouragingly.

"The frolickers had some empty tar barrels and an effigy
of the Pope, and they gave him and a copy of the Boston
Port Bill each a coat of tar and leaves, and then burned
them."

"What fun!" cried Janice, ceasing to stir in her interest.
"I wish mommy would let me go. She says 't is unbecoming
in the gentility, but I don't see why being well born should
be a reason for not having as good a time as--"

"As servants?" interrupted Fownes, hotly, as if her words
stung him.

"I'm afraid, Charles," reproved Janice, assuming again a
severe manner, "that you have a very bad temper."

Perhaps the man might have retorted, but instead he let
the anger die from his face, as he fixed his eyes on the floor.
"I have, Miss Janice," he acknowledged sadly, after a
moment's pause, "and 't is the curse of my life."

"You should discipline it," advised Miss Meredith, sagely.
"When I lose my temper, I always read a chapter in the
Bible," she added, with a decidedly "holier than thou" in
her manner.

"How many times hast thou read the good book through,
Miss Janice?" asked Fownes, smiling, and Miss Meredith's
virtuous pose became suddenly an uncomfortable one to the
young lady.

"You were to tell me something about Mr. Meredith,"
she said stiffly.

"After burning the Pope and the bill, 't was suggested by
some to empty the pot of tar on the fire. But objection was
made, because

"Because?" questioned Janice.

"Someone said 't would be needed shortly to properly
season green wood, and therefore must not be wasted."

"You don't think they--?" cried Janice, in alarm.

The servant nodded his head. "The feeling against the
squire is far deeper than you suspect. 'T will find vent in
some violence, I fear, unless he yield to public sentiment."

"He'll never truckle to the country licks and clouted
shoons of Brunswick," asserted Janice, proudly.

"'T will fare the worse for him. 'T is as sensible to run
counter to public opinion as 't is to cut roads over mountains."

"'T is worse still to be a coward," cried Janice, contemptuously.
"I fear, Charles, you are very mean-spirited."

Fownes shrugged his shoulders. "As a servant should be,"
he muttered bitterly.

"Even a servant can do what is right," answered the
girl.

"'T is not a question of right, 't is one of expediency," replied
the bondsman. "A year at court, Miss Janice, would
teach you that in this world 't is of monstrous importance to
know when to bow."

"What do you know of court?" exclaimed Janice.

"Very little," confessed the man. "But I know it teaches
one good lesson in life,--that of submission,--and an important
thing 't is to learn."

"I only bow to those whom I know to be my superiors,"
said Janice, with her head held very erect.

"'T is an easy way for you to avoid bowing," asserted the
groom, smiling.

Again Janice sought a change of subject by saying, "Think
you that is why we are being spied upon?"

"Spied?" questioned the bondsman.

"Last week dadda thought he saw a face one evening at the
parlour window, and two nights ago I looked up suddenly and
saw--Well, mommy said 't was only vapours, but I know I
saw something."

The servant turned his face away from Janice, and coughed.
Then he replied, "Perhaps 't was some one watching you.
Didst make no attempt to find him?"

"Dadda went to the window both times, but could see
nothing."

"He probably had time to hide behind the shrubs," surmised
Charles. "I shall set myself to watching, and I'll
warrant to catch the villain at it if he tries it again." From
the savageness with which he spoke, one would have inferred
that he was bitterly enraged at any one spying through the
parlour window on Miss Meredith's evening hours.

"I wish you would," solicited Janice. "For if it happened
again, I don't know what I should do. Mommy insisted it
was n't a ghost, and scolded me for screaming; but all the same,
it gave me a dreadful turn. I did n't go to sleep for hours."

"I am sorry it frightened you," said the servant, and then
after a moment's hesitation he continued, "'T was I, and if I
had thought for a moment to scare you--"

"You!" cried Janice. "What were you doing there?"

The man looked her in the eyes while he replied in a low
voice, "Looking at paradise, Miss Janice."

"Janice Meredith," said her mother's voice, sternly, "thou
good-for-nothing! Thou'st let the syrup burn, and the smell
is all over the house. Charles, what dost thou mean by loafing
indoors at this hour of the day? Go about thy work."

And paradise dissolved into a pot of burnt syrup.


IX
PARADISE AND ELSEWHERE

While Charles was within hearing, Mrs. Meredith
continued to scold Janice about the burnt syrup,
but this subject was ended with his exit.
"I'm ashamed that a daughter of mine should
allow a servant to be so familiar," Mrs. Meredith began anew.
"'T is a shame on us all, Janice. Hast thou no idea of what
is decent and befitting to a girl of thy station?"

"He was n't familiar," cried Janice, angrily and proudly,
"and you should know that if he had been I--he was telling
me--"

"Yes," cried her mother, "tell me what he was saying
about paradise? Dost think me a nizey, child, not to know
what men mean when they talk about paradise?"

Janice's cheeks reddened, and she replied hotly, "If men
talked to you about paradise, why should n't they talk to me?
I'm sure 't is a pleasant change after the parson's everlasting
and eternal talk of an everlasting and eternal--"

"Don't thee dare say it!" interrupted Mrs. Meredith.
"Thou fallen, sin-eaten child! Go to thy room and stay
there for the rest of the day. 'T is all of a piece that thou
shouldst disgrace us by unseemly conduct with a stable-boy.
Fine talk 't will make for the tavern."

The injustice and yet possible truth in this speech was too
much for Janice to hear, and without an attempt at reply, she
burst into a storm of tears and fled to her room.

Deprived of a listener, Mrs. Meredith sought the squire,
and very much astonished him by a prediction that, "Thy
daughter, Mr. Meredith, is going to bring disgrace on the
family."

"What's to do now?" cried the parent.

"A pretty to do, indeed," his wife assured him. "Dost
want her running off some fine night with thy groom?"

"Tush, Matilda!" responded Mr. Meredith. "'T is
impossible."

"Just what my parents said when thou camest a-courting."

"I was no redemptioner."

"'T was none the less a step-down for me," replied Mrs.
Meredith, calmly. "And I had far less levity than--"

"Nay, Matilda, she often reminds me very--"

"Lambert, I never was light! Or at least never after
I sat under Dr. Edwards and had a call. The quicker we
marry Janice to Mr. McClave, the better 't will be for
her."

"Now, pox me!" cried the squire, "if I'll give my lass to
be made the drudge of another woman's children."

"'T is the very discipline she needs," retorted the wife.
"But for my checking her a moment ago I believe she'd
have spoken disrespectfully of hell!"

"Small wonder!" muttered her husband. "Is 't not
enough to ye Presbyterians to doom one to everlasting
torment in the future life without making this life as bad?"

"'T is the way to be saved," replied Mrs. Meredith. "As
Mr. McClave said to Janice shortly since, 'Be assured that
doing the unpleasant thing is the surest road to salvation, for
tho' it should not find grace in the eyes of a righteously angry
God, yet having been done from no carnal and sinful craving
of the flesh, it cannot increase his anger towards you.' Ah,
Lambert, that man has the true gift."

"Since he's so damned set on being uncarnal," snapped
the squire, "let him go without Janice."

"And have her running off with an indentured servant, as
Anne Loughton did?"

"She'll do nothing of the kind. If ye want a husband for
the lass, let her take Phil."

"A bankrupt."

"Tush! There are acres enough to pay the old squire's
debts three times over. She'd bring Phil enough ready
money to clear it all, and 't is rich mellow land that will
double in value, give it time."

"I tell thee her head 's full of this bond-servant. The two
were in the kitchen just now, talking about paradise, and I
know not what other foolishness."

"That" said Mr. Meredith, with a grin of enjoyment,
"sounds like true Presbyterian doctrine. The Westminster
Assembly seem to have left paradise out of the creation."

"Such flippancy is shameful in one of thy years, Mr.
Meredith," said his wife, sternly, "and canst have but one
ending."

"That is all any of us can have, Patty," replied the squire,
genially.

Mrs. Meredith went to the door, but before leaving the
room, she said, still with a stern, set face, though with a break
in her voice, "Is 't not enough that my four babies are enduring
everlasting torment, but my husband and daughter must
go the same way?"

"There, there, Matilda!" cried the husband. "'T was
said in jest only and was nothing more than lip music. Come
back--" the speech ended there as a door at a distance
banged. "Now she'll have a cry all by herself," groaned the
squire. "'T is a strange thing she took it so bravely when
the road was rough, yet now, when 't is easy pulling, she lets
it fret and gall her."

Then Mr. Meredith looked into his fire, and saw another
young girl, a little more serious than Janice, perhaps, but still
gay-hearted and loved by many. He saw her making a stolen
match with himself; passed in review the long years of alienation
from her family, the struggle with poverty, and, saddest of
all, the row of little gravestones which told of the burial of the
best of her youth. He saw the day finally when, a worn, saddened
woman, she at last was in the possession of wealth, to
find in it no pleasure, yet to turn eagerly, and apparently with
comfort, to the teachings of that strange combination of fire
and logic, Jonathan Edwards. He recalled the two sermons during
Edwards's brief term as president of Nassau Hall, which
moved him so little, yet which had convinced Mrs. Meredith
that her dead babies had been doomed to eternal punishment
and had made her the stern, unyielding woman she was. The
squire was too hearty an animal, and lived too much in the
open air, to be given to introspective thought, but he shook
his head. "A strange warp and woof we weave of the skein,"
he sighed, "that sorrow for the dead should harden us to the
living." Mr. Meredith rose, went upstairs, and rapped at a
door. Getting no reply, after a repetition of the knock, he
went in.

A glance revealed what at first sight looked like a crumpled
heap of clothes upon the bed, but after more careful scrutiny
the mass was found to have a head, very much buried between
two pillows, and the due quantity of arms and legs. Walking
to the bed, the squire put his hand on the bundle.

"There, lass," he said, "'t is nought to make such a pother
about."

"Oh, dadda," moaned Janice, "I am the most unhappy
girl that ever lived."

It is needless to say after this remark that Miss Meredith's
knowledge of the world was not of the largest, and the squire,
with no very great range of experience, smiled a little as he
said--

"Then 't will not make you more miserable to wed the
parson?"

"Dadda!" exclaimed the girl, rolling over quickly, to get
a sight of his countenance. When she found him smiling, the
anxious look on the still red and tear-stained face melted
away, and she laughed merrily. "Think of the life I'd give
the good man! How I would wherrit him! He 'd have to
give up his church to have time enough to preach to me."
Apparently the deep woe alluded to the moment before was
forgotten.

"I've no manner of doubt he'd enjoy the task," declared
the father, with evident pride. "Ah, Jan, many a man would
enter the ministry, if he might be ordained parson of ye."

"The only parson I want is a father confessor," said Janice,
sitting up and giving him a kiss.

"Then what 's this maggot your mother has got in her
head about ye and Charles and paradise?" laughed her
father.

"Indeed, dadda," protested the girl, eagerly, "mommy was
most unjust. I was to stir some syrup, and Charles came into
the kitchen and would talk to me, and as I could n't leave the
pot, I had to listen, and then--well

"I thought as much!" cried the squire, heartily, when
Janice paused. "Where the syrup is, there'll find ye the
flies. But we'll have no horse-fly buzzing about ye. My
fine gentleman shall be taught where he belongs, if it takes
the whip to do it."

"No, dadda," exclaimed Janice. "He spoke but to warn
me of danger to you. He says there 's preparation to tar
and feather you unless you--you do something."

"Foo!" sniffed the squire. "Let them snarl. I'll show
them I'm not a man to be driven by tag, long tail, and
bobby."

"But Charles--" began the girl.

"Ay, Charles," interrupted Mr. Meredith. "I've no doubt
he's one of 'em. 'T is always the latest importations take
the hottest part against the gentry."

"Nay, dadda, I think he--"

"Mark me, that's what takes the tyke to the village so
often."

"He said 't was to drill he went."

"To drill?" questioned the squire. "What meant he by
that?"

"I asked him, and he said 't was quadrille. Dost think he
meant dancing or cards?"

"'T is in keeping that he should be a dancing master or a
card-sharper," asserted Mr. Meredith. "No wonder 't is a disordered
land when 't is used as a catchall for every man not
wanted in England. We'll soon put a finish to his night-walking."

"I don't think he's a villain, dadda, and he certainly
meant kindly in warning us."

"To make favour by tale-bearing, no doubt."

"I'm sure he'd not a thought of it," declared Janice,
with an unconscious eagerness which made the squire knit
his brows.

"Ye speak warmly, child," he said. "I trust your mother
be not justified in her suspicion."

The girl, who meanwhile had sprung off the bed, drew herself
up proudly. "Mommy is altogether wrong," she replied.
"I'd never descend so low."

"I said as much," responded the squire, gleefully.

"A likely idea, indeed!" exclaimed Janice. "As if I'd
have aught to do with a groom! No, I never could shame
the family by that."

"Wilt give me your word to that, Jan?" asked the squire.

"Yes," cried the girl, and then roguishly added, "Why,
dadda, I'd as soon, yes, sooner, marry old Belza, who at
least is a prince in his own country, than see a Byllynge marry
a bond-servant."


X
A COLONIAL CHRISTMAS

For some weeks following the pledge of Janice, the life
at Greenwood became as healthily monotonous as of
yore. Both Mr. and Mrs. Meredith spoke so sharply
to both Sukey and Charles of his loitering about the
kitchen that his visits, save at meal times, entirely ceased.
The squire went further and ordered him to put an end to
his trips to the village, but the man took this command in
sullen silence, and was often absent.

One circumstance, however, very materially lessened the
possible encounters between the bond-servant and the maiden.
This was no less than the setting in of the winter snows, which
put a termination to all the girl's outdoor life, excepting the
attendance at the double church services on Sundays, which
Mrs. Meredith never permitted to be neglected. From the
window Janice sometimes saw the groom playing in the drifts
with Clarion, but that was almost the extent of her knowledge
of his doings. It is to be confessed that she eagerly longed
to join them or, at least, to have a like sport with the dog.
Eighteenth-century etiquette, however, neither countenanced
such conduct in the quality, nor, in fact, clothed them for it.

A point worth noting at this time was connected with one
window of the parlour. Each afternoon as night shut down, it
was Peg's duty to close all the blinds, for colonial windows not
being of the tightest, every additional barricade to Boreas was
welcome, and this the servant did with exemplary care. But
every evening after tea, Janice always walked to a particular
window and, opening the shutter, looked out for a moment, as
if to see what the night promised, before she took her seat at
her tambour frame or sewing. Sometimes one of her parents
called attention to the fact that she had not quite closed the
shutters again, and she always remedied the oversight at once.
Otherwise she never looked at the window during the whole
evening, glance where she might. Presumably she still remembered
the fright her putative ghost had occasioned her,
and chose not to run the chance of another sight of him.
Almost invariably, however, in the morning she blew on the
frost upon the window of her own room and having rubbed
clear a spot, looked below, much as if she suspected ghosts
could leave tracks in the snow. In her behalf it is only fair
to say that the girls of that generation were so shut in as far
as regarded society or knowledge of men that they let their
imaginations question and wander in a manner difficult now
to conceive. At certain ages the two sexes are very much
interested in each other, and if this interest is not satisfied
objectively, it will be subjectively.

Snow, if a jailer, was likewise a defence, and apparently
cooled for a time the heat of the little community against the
squire. Even the Rev. Mr. McClave's flame of love and love
of flame were modified by the depth of the drifts he must
struggle through, in order to discourse on eternal torment
while gazing at earthly paradise. Janice became convinced
that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as
their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter
her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change
of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become
things of the past.

One of her tormenting factors was not to be so treated.
Philemon alone made nothing of the change of season, riding
the nine miles between his home and Greenwood by daylight
or by moonlight, as if his feeling for the girl not merely
warmed but lighted the devious path between the drifts. Yet
it was not to make love he came; for he sat a silent, awkward
figure when once within doors, speaking readily enough in
response to the elders, but practically inarticulate whenever
called upon to reply to Janice. Her bland unconsciousness
was a barrier far worse than the snow; and never dreaming
that he was momentarily declaring his love for her in a
manner far stronger than words, he believed her wholly ignorant
of what he felt, and stayed for hours at a time, longing
helplessly for a turn of events which should make it possible
for him to speak.

Philemon was thus engaged or disengaged one December
morning when Peg entered the parlour where the family were
sitting as close to the fire as the intense glow of the hickory
embers would allow, and handing Janice a letter with an air
of some importance, remarked, "Charles he ask me give you
dat." Then, colonial servants being prone to familiarity, and
negro slaves doubly so, Peg rested her weight on one foot,
and waited to learn what this unusual event might portend.
All present instantly fixed their eyes upon Janice, but had
they not done so it is probable that she would have coloured
much as she did, for the girl was enough interested and
enough frightened to be quite unconscious of the eyes upon
her.

"A letter for thee, lass!" exclaimed the squire. "Let 's
have the bowels of it."

The necessity for that very thing was what made the occurrence
so alarming to Janice, for her woman's intuition had at
once suggested, the moment she had seen the bold hand-writing
of the superscription, that it could be from none other
than Evatt, and she had as quickly surmised that her father
and mother would insist upon sight of the missive. Unaware
of what it might contain, she sat with red cheeks, not daring
to break the seal.

"Hast got the jingle brains, child?" asked her mother,
sharply, "that thou dost nothing but stare at it?"

Janice laid the letter in her lap, saying, "'T will wait till I
finish this row." It was certainly a hard fate which forced her
to delay the opening of the first letter she had ever received.

"'T will nothing of the sort," said her mother, reaching out
for the paper. "Art minded to read it on the sly, miss?
There shall be no letters read by stealth. Give it me."

"Oh, mommy," begged the girl, desperately, "I'll show
it to you, but--oh--let me read it first, oh, please!"

"I think 't is best not," replied her mother. "Thy anxiety
has an ill look to it, Janice."

The girl handed the letter dutifully, and with an anxious
attention watched her mother break it open, all pleasure in
the novelty of the occurrence quite overtopped by dread of
what was to come.

"What nonsense is this?" was Mrs. Meredith's anything
but encouraging exclamation. Then she read out--

"'T is unworthy of you, and of your acceptance, but 't is the
fairest gift I could think of, and the best that I could do. If
you will but put it in the frame you have, it may seem more
befitting a token of the feelings that inspired it."

Janice, unable to restrain her curiosity, rose and peered over
her mother's shoulder. From that vantage point she ejaculated,
"Oh, how beautiful she is!"

What she looked at was an unset miniature of a young girl,
with a wealth of darkest brown hair, powdered to a gray, and
a little straight nose with just a suggestion of a tilt to it, giving
the mignon face an expression of pride that the rest of the
countenance by no means aided. For the remaining features,
the mouth was still that of a child, the short upper lip projecting
markedly over the nether one, producing not so much
a pouty look as one of innocence; the eyes were brilliant
black, or at least were shadowed to look it by the long lashes,
and the black eyebrows were slender and delicately arched
upon a low forehead.

"Art a nizey, Janice," cried her mother, "not to know thine
own face?"

"Mommy!" exclaimed the girl. "Is--am I as pretty
as that?"

"'T is vastly flattered," said her mother, quickly. "I should
scarce know it."

"Nay, Matilda," dissented the squire, who was now also
gazing at the miniature. "'T is a good phiz of our lass, and
but does her justice. Who ever sent it ye, Jan?"

"I suppose 't was Mr. Evatt," confessed Janice.

"Let's have sight of the wrapper," said the father. "Nay,
Jan. This has been in no post-rider's bag or 't would bear the
marks."

"Peg, tell Charles to come here," ordered Mrs. Meredith,
and after a five minutes spent by the group in various surmises,
the bond-servant, followed by the still attentive Peg,
entered the room.

"Didst find this letter at the tavern?" demanded the squire.

The groom looked at the wrapper held out to him, and
replied, "Mayhaps."

"And what took ye there against my orders?"

Charles shrugged his shoulders, and then smiled. "Ask
Hennion," he said.

"What means he, Phil?" questioned the squire.

"Now you've been an' told the whole thing," exclaimed
Philemon, looking very much alarmed.

"Not I," replied the servant. "'T is for you to tell it,
man, if 't is to be told."

"Have done with such mingle-mangle talk," ordered Mr.
Meredith, fretfully. "Is 't not enough to have French gibberish
in the world, without--"

"Charles," interrupted Mrs. Meredith, "who gave thee
this letter?"

"Ask Miss Meredith," Fownes responded, again smiling.

"It must be Mr. Evatt," said Janice. Then as the bond-servant
turned sharply and looked at her, she became conscious
that she was colouring. "I wish there was no such
thing as a blush," she moaned to herself,--a wish in which no
one seeing Miss Meredith would have joined.

"'T was not from Mr. Evatt," denied the servant.

Without time for thought, Janice blurted out, "Then 't is
from you?" and the groom nodded his head.

"What nonsense is this?" cried Mr. Meredith. "Dost
mean to say 't is from ye? Whence came the picture?"

"I was the limner," replied Charles.

"What clanker have we here?" exclaimed the squire.

"'T is no lie, Mr. Meredith," answered the servant. "In
England I've drawn many a face, and 't was even said in jest
that I might be a poor devil of an artist if ever I quitted the
ser--quitted service."

"And where got ye the colours?"

"When I went to Princeton with the shoats I found Mr.
Peale painting Dr. Witherspoon, and he gave me the paints
and the ivory."

"Ye'll say I suppose too that ye wrote this," demanded
the squire, indicating the letter.

"I'll not deny it."

"Though ye could not sign the covenant?"

Fownes once more shrugged his shoulders. "'T is a fool
would sign a bond," he asserted.

"Better a fool than a knave," retorted Mr. Meredith, angered
by Charles' manner. "Janice, give the rogue back
the letter and picture. No daughter of Lambert Meredith
accepts gifts from her father's bond-servants."

The man flushed, while evidently struggling to control his
temper, and Janice, both in pity for him, as well as in desire
for possession of the picture, for gifts were rare indeed in
those days, begged--

"Oh, dadda, mayn't I keep it?"

"Mr. Meredith," said Charles, speaking with evident repression,
"the present was given only with the respect--"
he hesitated as if for words and then continued--"the respect
a slave might owe his--his better. Surely on this day it
should be accepted in the same spirit."

"What day mean ye?" asked Mr. Meredith.

The servant glanced at each face with surprise on his own.
When he read a question in all, he asked in turn, "Hast forgotten
't is Christmas?"

Mrs. Meredith, who was still holding the portrait, dropped
it on the floor, as if it were in some manner dangerous.
"Christmas!" she cried. "Janice, don't thee dare touch
the--"

"Oh, mommy, please," beseeched the girl.

"Take it away, Charles," ordered Mrs. Meredith. "And
never let me hear of thy being the devil's deputy again.
We'll have no papish mummery at Greenwood."

The servant sullenly stooped, picked up the slip of ivory
without a word, and turned to leave the room. But as he
reached the door, Philemon found tongue.

"I'll trade that 'ere for the fowlin'-piece you set such
store